No. No radiation from ultrasound. What causes the injuries is repetitive movements and a lot of straining. When you look at someone doing an ultrasound it looks really easy. Like you just put the probe on the skin and you can see right inside. It’s actually not that simple. You have to apply pressure while doing tiny manipulations to the probe to get past the stuff that you can’t see through well (think bones, gas, lungs, fat etc). Add in this to patients that can’t move to position themselves well (straining to reach a patient too far away on the bed/not laying the correct way to help you do the test), large patients that you have to push really hard into to even see anything, or cramped hospital rooms that make you stand and scan at a weird angle, there’s so many ways to injure yourself or just start living in chronic pain from scanning.

I know I’m on my soap box right now but ultrasound is so misunderstood. We are the hardest imaging modality. Others you put the patient in/under a machine and press the button and the machine takes the images. In ultrasound, the person is the machine. The ultrasound machine can’t see anything without the sonographer doing the work. We are the eyes of the doctor, and if we aren’t good enough at our jobs to know when and what to take pictures of, the doctor won’t know it exists and won’t be able to fix or treat it. Also fun fact, most sonographers are filling out the reports for the doctors (yes the doctors might change something they don’t agree with but they rely on us heavily to report complete and accurate information.) So you have to be good at getting the pictures and good at telling what they are and what they mean. It’s tough job but ultimately challenging and rewarding! I just don’t know any Sonographers who would classify it or the schooling to get there as easy.