Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Block, an ED Opioid Alternative
Anaesthesiology News
Alexis LaPietra, DO
With the opioid epidemic ever present in US hospitals, emergency physicians working with anaesthesiologists to manage pain in the ED setting are on the front lines of this urgent public health crisis. Alexis LaPietra, DO, a medical director for pain management in the emergency department of St. Joseph’s Healthcare System, shares some key takeaways and lessons learned when developing and implementing a formal programme focused on novel alternatives to opioid prescriptions for pain. The ALTOSM (Alternatives To Opioids) programme uses alternatives such as nitrous oxide, trigger point injections, Lidoderm patches, anti-inflammatory medications, muscle relaxants and ultrasound-guided nerve blocks, whenever possible, for appropriate patients to manage their pain in the emergency department. Read Dr. LaPietra’s article to learn more about how a programme such as ALTOSM can be successful in your hospital.
…
Ultrasound for Neonate & Paediatric Care
Ultrasound imaging has become imperative in neonatal & paediatric intensive care unit (NICU& PICU) for the evaluation and delivery of care.The introduction of a high-quality, reasonably priced, portable ultrasound unit has now made it possible for neonatologists & paediatricians to rapidly obtain diagnostic information that can be extremely helpful in the evaluation of a critically ill neonate or child. …
POCUS Profile: Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch
Point-of-care ultrasound is playing an important role in the anaesthesiology department at Spain’s Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch, Senior Doctor and Head of Section in the hospital’s Department of Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation and Associate Professor of Anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, discussed how the use of ultrasound technology has increased in recent years, and the benefits it offers to the clinicians and patients. …
POCUS Profile: Dr. Sameer Bhandari
Dr. Sameer Bhandari, a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at Pinderfields General Hospital in Wakefield, England, plays an integral role in the company’s Complete Ultrasound-guided Regional Anaesthesia Education (CURE) course. Here, he describes how he teaches ultrasound-guided regional blocks to physicians in the UK. …
Portable Ultrasound Helps Researchers Understand Sharks
Every year the world's oceans lose roughly 100 million sharks due to human hunting. The big problem? Scientists don't know how to manage the population back. …
A Letter from Dr. Samuel Abelson
The following is a letter from Dr. Samuel Abelson, an emergency medicine physician who lives in Minneapolis.Four years ago, Project Medishare began teaching point-of-care ultrasound to the staff at Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port Au Prince. Through the Sonosite Global Health programme, we have borrowed multiple loaner machines to use in teaching. …
Reducing Costs and Increasing Care Quality With Ultrasound-Guided PIVs
How does ultrasound-guided vascular access improve care and reduce costs? …
When IV Insertion Seems Impossible
Any medical professional with hospital experience knows how crucial peripheral IV access can be. Getting fluids and medications into a critically ill or injured patient can make or break the effectiveness of their treatment. …
Ultrasound: Increasingly Common & Versatile
Point-of-care ultrasound is efficient. It is non-invasive. It is safe. And fortunately for everyone, it is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Most of the public is introduced to ultrasound when it was used to begin monitoring foetal and maternal health during pregnancy, but in fact, ultrasound’s utility has since spread into nearly every medical field. Used for diagnosis and for guiding procedures, ultrasound offers excellent imaging capabilities with minimally invasive, efficacious diagnosis abilities without exposing patients to ionising radiation. …
Hospital Continues Efforts to Reduce Opioid Over-Prescription
St. Joseph Regional Medical Centre in Paterson, New Jersey has been among the forefront of medical providers who are attempting to stem the U.S. opioid addiction epidemic where it often starts: the Emergency Department. …
User Stories: Sports Medicine Clinic Physician Uses Sonosite Ultrasound
Dr. Adam Garnett, a sports and exercise medicine (SEM) consultant at the Jersey Sports Medicine Clinic, divides his time between treating rugby players suffering from acute trauma injuries and triathletes and runners with overuse injuries. He explained how the use of point-of-care ultrasound has changed the way he manages sports injuries. …
Sports and Exercise Medicine Benefits from the Use of Ultrasound
Point-of-care ultrasound is an essential tool for Dr. Mark Ridgewell, an early pioneer of sport and exercise medicine (SEM). Through the course of his career, Mark has worked with many amateur and professional sportsmen and women, beginning with rugby and including three years with England Cricket and eight years with the Wales football team. …
Floating Doctors: Remembering a Foetal Ultrasound from Years Ago
by Dr. Ben LaBrot, founder of Floating DoctorsAs of this writing, my wife is pregnant with our first child, and the novelty has long since worn off. After looking after so many other people’s pregnancies, it’s a novel experience to be on the other end of the ultrasound probe, as it were. Complicated pregnancies are more than the miracle of creating new life—they can be a long, stressful waiting game fraught with nasty surprises, difficult challenges and uncertainty… as I now understand better than I would like. …
Sonosite Ultrasound Lends Help to Humanitarian Efforts in Mosul, Iraq
Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, is slowly rebuilding its healthcare infrastructure after years of war. Dr. Henryk Pich is doing his part to help. …
POCUS in Emergency Medicine: Dispatches from Iraqi Kurdistan
Medical imaging offers life-saving insights into patient health—and perhaps no other imaging modality is more versatile and mobile than point-of-care ultrasound. In a fascinating dispatch from the Kurdish city of Duhok in northern Iraq, Dr. Christine Butts describes how point-of-care ultrasound is an indispensable tool for emergency physicians, especially when patients arrive unconscious and with no indication of an obvious malady. …
POCUS in Pre-hospital Settings: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Time is of the essence in an emergency situation, and may be the difference between life and death. Ambulance crews on the front line must decide rapidly whether or not a patient is suffering from a life-threatening condition requiring specialist treatment, and point-of-care ultrasound can provide vital guidance. …
Sonosite Sells 100,000th Ultrasound System
FUJIFILM Sonosite is delighted to announce that we have recently sold our 100,000th system. A Sonosite X-Porte, our premier kiosk ultrasound system, was delivered to a hospital in California in early October. “We are thrilled to be able to provide the X-Porte as our 100,000th system to one of our valued customers,” said Rich Fabian, FUJIFILM Sonosite’s COO, who announced the recipient of the 100,000th point-of-care ultrasound system at an employee Town Hall meeting at FUJIFILM Sonosite’s Bothell headquarters on October 19th. …
Cardiac Ultrasound: Echocardiography with Dr. Robert Arntfield
Point-of-Care Ultrasound and Echocardiography Go from "zero to scan" with this 5-part video series from Sonosite and Dr. Robert Arntfield. Learn about Doppler Principles, TEE, Stroke Volume, TAPSE, RSVP and more. …