Sonosite Ultrasound Technology in an African Village
Emergency physician Dr. Steven Boutrus was kind enough to write this article for FUJIFILM Sonosite about his use of ultrasound during a medical mission for Grace Dental and Medical Missions.
Boïffo is a rural village in the far north of Benin, West Africa. It is a farming village typical of this region, containing densely clustered, mud-walled houses in the village centre, surrounded by several miles of farmland in every direction. There are no public utilities such as electricity or running water, and the only government presence is the village chief. The region is dotted…
Doctors Use Paediatric Ultrasound in Bolivia
Paediatric cardiac anaesthesiologist Dr. Pablo Motta MD, FAAP recently returned from Bolivia on a medical mission for HeartGift, developed through a partnership between by Texas Children’s Hospital and Memorial Herman Children’s Hospital, both located in Houston, Texas, and la Fundación Incor. in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The goal of this mission is provide free, world-class paediatric cardiac care to children from underserved areas of Santa Cruz, Bolivia and its surroundings. The long-term is to develop a local team to perform paediatric cardiovascular care that could work independently.The…
POCUS’ Contribution to Value-Based Medicine
Axis Imaging News
Diku Mandavia, MD, FACEP, FRCPC, Chief Medical Officer at FUJIFILM Sonosite
With healthcare costs continuing to increase and more insurance companies talking to their hospital providers about signing new value-based payment contracts, a new emphasis on total cost of ownership in the evaluation of medical equipment for purchase is occurring. In this article published in AXIS Imaging News by Dr. Diku Mandavia, Chief Medical Officer, FUJIFILM Sonosite, hospitals can learn how to monetize the ongoing training and education, downtime contingency options, and replacement costs…
A Solid Future for ICU Ultrasound
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become an established tool for the rapid assessment and diagnosis of patients across a variety of medical disciplines, not least in the high-pressure environment of intensive care medicine.
Dr. Timm Steuber, senior consultant and head of the ICU at Evangelisches Krankenhaus Unna, Germany, discussed his day-to-day use of ICU ultrasound and why he considers POCUS increasingly important. Dr. Steuber started his career as a paramedic before training in medicine and specializing in anesthesia. In his role as a helicopter doctor, he readily recognized…
One for All - Standardising Medical Equipment
The North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust serves approximately 700,000 residents of Cambridgeshire, South Lincolnshire, and the neighbouring counties. This recently created trust, formed in April 2017, includes three hospitals—Hinchingbrooke, Peterborough City and Stamford, and Rutland—plus community clinics in Ely and Doddington.Jim McWilliams, Associate Director for Technical Services at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, understands the benefits of standardisation of medical equipment for clinicians and the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust. Together with a colleague at…
TEE Simulators Shown to be Effective POCUS Education Tools
Two studies published by the National Institutes of Health show promising results for the use of simulators in the training of emergency physicians (EP) in performing transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). In the study “Focused transesophageal echocardiography for emergency physicians—description and results from simulation training of a structured four-view examination”, a post-workshop survey of a convenience sample of 14 EPs revealed that all study participants were “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with the educational session. 12 of the EPs (85.7 %) participants reported feeling…
Ultrasound Guidelines for Paediatric Vascular Access
More than five million central venous catheter (CVC) lines are placed in hospitals each year, making it one of the most common invasive emergency room procedures. Although NICE guidelines for ultrasound-guided placement of central venous lines in adults and children were first issued in the UK in October 2002, Dr. James Bennett, Consultant Anaesthetist at Birmingham Children's Hospital, describes how the debate has since moved on from whether ultrasound should be used for vascular access, to what other information and safety assurances it can provide, especially in paediatrics…
In Case of Emergency, Use POCUS
Time is of the essence in the emergency department, where a prompt diagnosis can litreally mean the difference between life and death.In this environment, access to point-of-care ultrasound is essential, providing vital information to help clinicians rapidly determine the most appropriate course of action for emergency patients. Dr. Martin Langer, clinical lead for emergency medicine at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Unna, describes the importance of ultrasound in his department.The Evangelisches Krankenhaus Unna is a 324-bed, district hospital in Germany that includes a certified stroke unit…
Innovative Scottish Programme Puts POCUS in Rural Ambulances
FUJIFILM Sonosite’s M-Turbo point-of-care (POC) ultrasound systems will soon be providing pre-hospital diagnostics across the Scottish Highlands as part of the innovative SatCare trial. This study aims to combine POC ultrasound and advanced communications to enable remote image interpretation and decision making for a range of time-critical conditions.The ongoing development of high speed mobile data networks has transformed telemedicine – remote diagnosis and direction of treatment – leading to improved outcomes for a wide range of medical conditions. However, many existing telemedicine…
Ultrasound in Limited-Resource Settings can Help Saves Lives
Dr Ben LaBrot 2.png by Dr. Ben LaBrot, founder of Floating DoctorsRecently, while visiting the US, I went to the emergency room with a family member who was suffering some generalised complaints (chest and abdominal pain).Very soon after we got checked in, the attending physician ordered a litany of tests—a complete blood count with differential, blood clot tests (d-dimer), ESR and CRP, a metabolic panel, a liver panel, blood cultures, urinalysis, chest X-ray, ECG, abdominal ultrasound, and a medical and a surgical review. I immediately felt the challenge of practicing in a…
Operation Restore Hope Uses Sonosite iViz for Charitable Dental Mission
Operation Restore Hope is an Australia-based surgical charity for less fortunate children in the Philippines with birth defects and deformities, especially cleft lip and cleft palate.
ORH was founded in 1993 by Sydney plastic surgeon Dr. Darryl Hodgkinson and has carried out more than 2,500 operations.
Sonosite’s Global Health Loaner Pool recently loaned ORH a Sonosite iViz portable ultrasound machine for a recent mission. Anaesthetist Dr. Karthik Nagarajan sent us this account:
"ORH sends one surgical mission to Manila (Las Piñas City Medical Centre) each year to conduct five days of…
Point-of-Care Ultrasound on Mt. Everest
Dr. Luanne Freer is, to put it mildly, comfortable with being uncomfortable.A trained emergency medicine physician who grew up in the Washington DC area, Dr. Freer serves as medical director of Yellowstone National Park through Medcor Inc. When she’s not busy with her full-time job, or volunteering to save lives in Sierra Leone’s Ebola outbreak, you might find her working at the emergency clinic that she founded, Everest Base Camp Medical Clinic (Everest ER).During the annual climbing season, which usually runs from April through May, Dr. Freer collabourates with Nepali and foreign doctors;…
Humanitarian Doctor Returns to Haiti with Sonosite M-Turbo
In our June 2017 blog post, we reported on gynecologist/obstetrician Dr. Audrey “Dree” Stryker’s mission with the IWISH Foundation to Haiti with the M-Turbo. Dr. Stryker recently sent our Sonosite Global Health program another report from her most recent medical mission to Haiti. She had borrowed a Sonosite M-Turbo with C60x and ICTx transducers from the Global Health Loaner Pool.
In her letter describing the 2019 mission to Haiti (accompanied by her colleague, urogynecologist Dr. Robert Hosty), Dr. Stryker went into detail of how she used the M-Turbo, with our first successful portable…
POCUS Profile: Dr. T. Sivashanmugam
Dr. T. Sivashanmugam MD, DNB in Anaesthesiology, PDCC, FRCP is a Professor in Anaesthesiology at Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute, a 1500-bed tertiary care teaching university hospital at Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, India. He has more than ten years’ experience in practicing ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia (USGRA). For the last five years, Dr. Sivashanmugam teaches and trains residents in anaesthesiology.He initially started using Sonosite MicroMaxx ultrasound machine in 2009, and then shifted to NanoMaxx, M-Turbo, EDGE II, and eventually, X-Porte systems. Dr.…
Sonosite iViz Helps Make Dialysis More Comfortable
Point-of-care ultrasound is an essential tool for busy nephrology departments, and dialysis units in particular. Dr. Christoph C. Haufe, clinical lead at an outpatient dialysis centre in Erfurt, Germany, discusses the use of the technique in daily practise and his involvement in ultrasound training.
The nephrology centre in Erfurt is an outpatient dialysis unit for people living locally and a centre of renal care. The associated renal department is a regional specialist nephrology hospital that treats inpatients suffering from a range of kidney complaints from across a wide area of eastern…
Addressing Addiction and Pain Management in Our Nation’s Military and Veteran Populations
Over the last two years, the U.S. Pain Management Best Practises Inter-Agency Task Force studied how pain is treated in the military and veteran populations to make recommendations to improve the treatment of acute and chronic pain. The Task Force issued its report earlier this summer, “Pain Management Best Practises: Updates, Gaps, Inconsistencies, and Recommendations,” which highlights the barriers to optimal pain care and the reduction of opioid misuse among veterans and military personnel.The Task Force report discusses the challenges in treating pain that are specific to the military and…
Emergency Physician Brings Ultrasound to Rural Guatemala
Emergency physician Dr. Elijah Katz has worked with Sonosite ultrasound machines for several clinical and teaching missions around the world. Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is a large part of Dr. Katz’s practise both at home and abroad, and he currently serves as a Fellow in Combined Clinical Ultrasound and Global Health in the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of Texas, San Antonio. His most recent medical trip was the 2019 ¡Vamos Guatemala! mission, a biannual project with the Long School of Medicine at UT San Antonio. Dr. Katz was one of four supervising doctors from UT San…
Medical Mission to Kenya Introduces High School Students to Ultrasound
Dr. Martin Kelly is an attending physician in the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at Darnall Army Medical Center, Fort Hood, Texas. He has been involved in mission trips for 15 years, most of them in conjunction with Maranatha Volunteers International located in Sacramento, California. Dr. Kelly was kind enough to write a report about this nonprofit and its collaboration with Sonosite.
Maranatha Volunteers International is a non-profit Christian organization with the primary focus of organizing volunteers to build churches and schools in developing nations. They sponsor many short…
Charitable Medical Mission Uses Ultrasound for Maternal Care in Zambia
Australian nonprofit Globalinks Medical Foundation is dedicated to providing healthcare to global communities in remote locations where access to healthcare services is limited. Globalinks was founded by Dr. Peter Locke and his wife Carolyn following their experiences volunteering overseas, where they witnessed a prevalence of of illness, disease, and child mortality rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Globalinks works with local health staff, providing much needed supplies and equipment and planning with local health ministries to achieve sustainable progress towards positive health…
U.S. Government Report Provides Recommendations and Opportunities during National Pain Management Month
Earlier this summer, the U.S. Pain Management Best Practises Inter-Agency Task Force issued the report “Pain Management Best Practises: Updates, Gaps, Inconsistencies, and Recommendations.” The U.S. Pain Management Best Practises Inter-Agency Task Force (Task Force) was created under the 2016 Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) to address the treatment of acute and chronic pain that has driven the nation’s opioid epidemic. The report’s release is particularly timely since September is National Pain Management Month, when policymakers and stakeholders across the healthcare…