**Acoustic Therapy as Mechanical Stimulation of Osteogenesis**

Carlos Vinícius Buarque de Gusmão, José Marcos Alves and William Dias Belangero

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/63745

#### **Abstract**

Acoustic therapy is a branch of mechanotherapy. This modality of treatment can be used for osteogenesis-related orthopaedic disorders. Because bone cells are respon‐ sive to acoustic forces, specially designed devices were developed to generate acoustic forces in the form of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound, extracorporeal shock waves or radial pressure waves. With the developed devices, it became possible to provide patients an alternative, or adjunctive, treatment for pathologies involving bone homeostasis, that is, the balance of bone formation and bone resorption. The socalled acoustic therapy (low-intensity pulsed ultrasound stimulation, LIPUS; extracorporeal shock wave therapy, ESWT; and radial pressure wave therapy, RPWT) acts through physical phenomena produced when acoustic waves are transmitted into living tissue and converted to biological reactions, thereby activating signalling pathways that drive a cellular response in favour of osteogenesis. In this chapter, an extensive review of the literature was performed to provide the reader the "state of the art" about the physical phenomena, molecular events and clinical uses of acoustic forces for osteogenesis-related orthopaedics disorders.

**Keywords:** osteogenesis, low-intensity pulsed ultrasound stimulation (LIPUS), extrac‐ orporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT), radial pressure wave therapy (RPWT), acoustic forces, mechanotransduction, mechanical loading
