Join the Redesigned Sonosite Institute Today!
Have you ever considered using point-of-care ultrasound but didn’t know where to begin?FUJIFILM Sonosite customers have a powerful tool to help them ramp up their scanning skills, making the POCUS learning curve a lot less steep.We’re excited to announce the redesign of Sonosite Institute, our online education portal for POCUS that’s only for Sonosite customers. More good news? Sonosite Institute membership is included in the purchase of a Sonosite ultrasound system.You already know that using ultrasound at the point of care can improve patient care paths and outcomes. Now, access the tools…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Farah Chaudhry
Dr. Farah Chaudhry, Consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Leeds Sexual Health, West Yorkshire, describes how point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) allows her to give informed and clear assurances to women using long-acting contraception.I spent 10 years as a GP (general practitinoer) in Leeds, developing a special interest and expertise in women’s health, in particular complex contraception. After that, I decided to pursue the specialty of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) full time. I managed the complex contraception clinics in Kirklees and Bradford for Locala Community…
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…
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.Because of the delicacy of new-born infants (particularly critically ill or premature babies), transport to other areas of the hospital for USG, CT, or MR imaging is often difficult…
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."The University Clinic of Barcelona is an 800-bed, level three hospital serving a local population of around 300,000…
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.My relationship with Sonosite and ultrasound goes back many years, and I routinely use its systems in daily practise. I was approached to join the CURE faculty a few years ago as I was already running some ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia training courses, and was…
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. As an apex predator, sharks regulate smaller predators in the food chain, helping to ensure the oceans' ecosystem remains balanced and stable. Unfortunately, the global shark population has decreased by 90%, which means that understanding and protecting sharks is seriously at risk. That's why OCEARCH, a non-profit created to change how the scientific community studies large ocean animals, is interested…
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.In 2016, Project Medishare was able to purchase a discounted M-Turbo through Sonosite SoundCaring and bring it to Haiti. This past spring, we once again were able to donate two M-Turbo ultrasound machines to the ICU/PICU staff at Hospital Bernard…
Reducing Costs and Increasing Care Quality With Ultrasound-Guided PIVs
How does ultrasound-guided vascular access improve care and reduce costs? In a new article in Axis Imaging, FUJIFILM Sonosite's Chief Medical Officer Diku Mandavia writes about how Matthew Ostroff, ARNP, a vascular access specialist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare System, a 700-bed hospital in Paterson, N.J., chartered St. Joseph's recently implemented ultrasound-guided vascular access programme in its emergency department, which ranks as the second busiest in the nation."Procedural ultrasound…acts as a visual GPS that allows clinicians to map the patient’s blood vessels and identify the…
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.At the best, a “difficult stick”—that is, a patient whose veins are difficult to insert a needle into—presents a problem that involves multiple needle pricks (with increasing pain after each attempt), frustrated and flustered medical staff, and a delay in treatment. At worst, a difficult stick can mean mounting medical complications as dehydration worsens; and the eventual…
When IV Insertion Seems Impossible
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Any medical professional with hospital experience knows how crucial successfully inserting a peripheral IV can be. Getting fluids and medications into a critically ill or injured patient can make or break the effectiveness of their treatment.
At the best, a patient with challenging vasculature that involves multiple insertion attempts can frustrate and fluster medical staff while causing the patient to experience pain. At worst, a tricky vein can mean mounting medical complications as dehydration worsens; and the eventual…
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. These days, ultrasound is…
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.FUJIFILM Sonosite has been delighted to work with St. Joseph’s anaesthetic specialists to provide ultrasound imaging at the point of care, which can help physicians locate nerves that can benefit from a nerve block. Combined with other analgesics (even traditional OTC medications like Advil), these multi-modal pain control methods have helped St. Joseph cut their opioid…
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.My interest in sports and exercise medicine started 20 years ago when I was a GP in Bath and got involved with the rugby club. After moving to Jersey, I joined the Jersey Sports Medicine Clinic, and also developed my own private practise. I look after a lot…
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.The first SEM consultant to be registered in Wales, Dr. Ridgewell continues to work with the LTA and WTA women’s tennis tour every summer, and with Welsh Olympic and Commonwealth athletes across many sports under the Sport Wales banner. Mark also leads an…
Supporting REBOA with POCUS
Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA) is an emergency technique for temporarily blocking the blood flow to the lower body in the event of subdiaphragmatic internal bleeding.A guidewire and balloon-like device are inserted into the aorta via the femoral artery and, as it inflates, the balloon blocks the aorta, reducing blood flow to the injured sites but maintaining it to vital organs such as the heart and brain. Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) can be used to guide and verify the position of the guidewire and balloon during the procedure, and is a preferred…
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.My wife and I regularly attend ultrasound appointments to check on the…
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.
As a young man, Dr. Henryk Pich spent time travelling in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, he feels a personal connection to the region and, after seeing the devastation caused by years of war to cities such as Mosul, wanted to offer whatever help he could. Moved by the makeshift treatment centers he witnessed in the hospital ruins, he promised the skeleton team of local doctors at the pediatric hospital that he would return, bringing with…
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."The volume of patients has been high at Emergency Hospital. At the height of the war in Mosul, the physicians reported receiving more than 100 injured…
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. Geert-Jan Deddens, a nurse practitioner in emergency care with the Rotterdam Ambulance Service, describes the benefits of using hand-carried ultrasound systems to assess suspected abdominal aortic aneurysms, allowing patients to be taken to the most appropriate hospital…