Welcome to Recover, Perform, Excel, the performance and rehabilitation podcast from Kiko Health! This season, we follow recovery through its key stages with the help of our clinically esteemed guests: what diagnostic ultrasound can reveal, how treatment, training load and recovery strategies keep players on the pitch, and how theory links to practice when academia and sport combine. In this episode, host John Hartley is joined by Dr Marwan Al-Dawoud, a Sport and Exercise Medicine doctor and musculoskeletal (MSK) ultrasound specialist who has worked with the FA, the RFL, Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants and Burnley Football Club, and who splits his working week between NHS community MSK ultrasound services and private practice. Marwan's route in began as a multi-sport schoolboy - a goalkeeper and rugby player who also ran 100m hurdles and 200m sprint to county level and trialled for Scotland's U18 rugby union squad, before a broken collarbone ended his playing ambitions. He studied medicine at Manchester University, completed his foundation and GP training, and spent the following 15 years moving progressively deeper into sports and MSK medicine - his first taste of pitch side cover being, fittingly, American football's Brit Bowl. Years across rugby league, athletics, dance, rugby and football followed, before he stepped back from full-time club medicine to specialise in MSK ultrasound and ultrasound-guided intervention. The conversation moves from the governance gap opening up as point-of-care ultrasound spreads faster than formal training can keep pace, through the promise and risk of AI-assisted scanning tools like handheld Clarius probes, and into Marwan's own pioneering research building a new classification system for dynamic hamstring ultrasound with a hands-free wearable probe harness. A “myth or method” segment covers Marwan's scepticism toward tissue-modulation devices, shockwave and vibration platforms, and the crowded field of injectables, before the episode turns to managing a player who wants to play through an injury against clinical advice, and closes on Marwan's advice to anyone starting out in ultrasound: use the free resources available, get hands-on with a scanner, find a mentor, and never let anything come before your professional licence. 00:00 - Introduction to Marwan and his roles across the FA, the RFL, Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants and Burnley FC, and how he and John first met 02:33 - Marwan's route in: a multi-sport schoolboy career, a Scotland U18s rugby trial cut short by a broken collarbone, and studying medicine at Manchester 04:03 - Foundation and GP training, then 15 years moving deeper into sports and MSK medicine - starting with covering American football's Brit Bowl 05:14 - Stepping back from full-time club medicine to specialise in MSK ultrasound, and why most of Marwan's week is still spent in NHS community services 06:52 - Speed of access to care: what sport gets right that the NHS often can't, and why that gap matters to patients 08:04 - The flip side of fast diagnostics: over-diagnosis, over-treatment, and the navicular stress fracture dilemma 10:12 - Managing timelines with coaches and executives after surgery vs conservative treatment, and the ethics of PRP 11:32 - The governance gap in point-of-care ultrasound as more practitioners pick up the probe 13:26 - Where training has improved and where it hasn't: the ongoing struggle to find mentorship for new sonographers 14:37 - AI-assisted scanning: Clarius handheld probes, tissue labelling and haptic feedback 16:52 - The risk of over-reliance on AI tools for less experienced scanners 18:13 - Ultrasound CT: an early-stage, full-body water-immersion ultrasound scanner 20:07 - Bringing it back to daily practice: the steep anatomy learning curve of scanning 22:04 - Using ultrasound wisely: why clinical acumen has to come before the scan, not after 23:42 - Neovascularisation and the double-edged sword of showing patients their own scans 24:33 - Interventional work: nerve blocks and ultrasound-guided diagnostic workups for hip and groin pain 25:26 - Dynamic ultrasound: a hands-free wearable probe harness and the start of hamstring research with Dutch collaborators 27:40 - Building a working group and a new dynamic hamstring classification system, presented at Aspetar, BASEM and Isokinetic 29:06 - Handheld vs cart-based ultrasound: portability versus image quality 30:20 - Myth or method: scepticism on tissue-modulation devices, shockwave and vibration platforms 33:11 - The injectables minefield: PRP, hyaluronic acid and prolotherapy, and how to judge what actually works 36:16 - Bias in research evidence, and why sleep, nutrition and stress still matter more than any device 41:12 - A question passed on from a previous guest: managing a player who says they're fit to play against your clinical judgement 44:10 - The coach-medic-player triangle, trust, and a concussion story from Marwan's rugby league days 47:53 - Marwan's closing advice: use the free resources available, get hands-on with a scanner, find a mentor, and never compromise your professional licence Connect with your host, John Hartley on LinkedIn. Find your guest, Dr Marwan Al-Dawoud, on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening to Recover, Perform, Excel brought to you by Kikko Health. This is a Loaded Hype production.
