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…
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. The Sonosite X-Porte was developed to…
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. Learn With Sonosite and Dr. Robert Arntfield Dr. Arntfield is a trained emergency physician, intensivist and traumatologist who is active with point of care ultrasound in all clinical areas. He is co-author of the textbook: Point-of-Care Ultrasound and is director of the critical care ultrasound programme at Western University. He is a past course leader for the…
Spanish NGO Cirugía Solidaria Uses M-Turbo in Kenyan Health Mission
During the Summer of 2017, a group of healthcare professionals – the majority from the Hospital Clínico Universitario Virgen de la Arrixaca (HCUVA) in Murcia, Spain – travelled to Kenya in partnership with the Spanish NGO Cirugía Solidaria.They brought along surgical equipment – from beds to lamps to scalpels – to create a first-rate hospital set-up, most of which was donated by HCUVA. FUJIFILM Sonosite was pleased to support them by supplying an M-Turbo point-of-care ultrasound system for their trip. Angela Cepero Sonosite 2017-10-02.png "Over the course of two…
POCUS Support for Professional Spanish Athletes
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is an essential everyday tool in sports medicine at the Clinica Ivre in Valencia, Spain. Trauma specialist Dr. Miguel Ángel Buil-Bellver describes how ultrasound examination of the musculo-skeletal system has made diagnosing injuries easier and quicker, informing treatment decisions and help-ing athletes to return to their sports sooner.The Clinica Ivre opened 10 years ago in Valencia and offers a full range of sports medical services for professional and amateur athletes, including the Valencia Paralympic Committee, the Valencia Basket basketball team…
Sonosite iViz on the Race Across America
The Race Across America is billed as the world’s toughest bicycle race; a non-stop, coast-to-coast, transcontinental trek from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland. Racers cycle for over 3,000 miles across 12 states of frequently arid terrain, and climb 170,000 feet through three mountain ranges, with the fastest teams finishing in just over five days, and solo racers in under eight. Dr. Rüdiger Eichholz, a consultant anaesthetist at the private practise Medizi in Stuttgart (and keen amateur cyclist), joined the support crew of the winning eight-man team for 2017, armed with a…
9 Reasons Ultrasound is Invaluable for Nephrologists
Point-of-care ultrasound is fast becoming a key instrumental technique in nephrology , supporting diagnostics and improving delivery of renal replacement therapy and subsequent vascular monitoring.Here are the top 9 reasons why nephrologists can't afford to ignore ultrasound-guided procedures and applications. 1. Kidney and urinary tract scans provide information about size, shape and echogenicity, as well as an opportunity to identify hydronephrosis.2. Patients with chronic kidney disease are often at risk of cardiovascular complications, such as left ventricular hypertrophy.3. CKD…
User Stories: Spreading Point-of-Care Ultrasound Hospital-Wide
What departments are the heaviest users of point-of-care ultrasound in an American-based hospital?The answer varies from hospital to hospital, but we usually see Emergency Medicine, Cardiology, Critical Care and Anaesthesiology rounding out the heavyweight users of bedside ultrasound.But what happens when a hospital wants to bring point-of-care ultrasound to different departments with different clinical applications? And what happens when a hospital wants point-of-care ultrasound in every department? With every doctor?If you’re in Germany, that hospital would be the Evangelisches Krankenhaus…
Emergency Medicine Professionals: What to Look For at ACEP16
There are a lot of things Las Vegas is known for – gambling, over-the-top entertainment, and world-class dining. Now there’s one more thing to add to that list: ACEP 2016 – the leading event for emergency medicine. In a few days, thousands of emergency medical professionals from around the globe will gather for ACEP16, an immersive experience that goes beyond what typical medical conferences offer. So what makes ACEP16 so important?ACEP16 is the largest Emergency Medicine focused conference in the US that brings together education, networking, policy development, and new medical…
Clinical Chest Professionals, Here's Our Guide to CHEST2016
Has it really been a year already? We’re back in LA this week for another edition of CHEST, the premier clinical event for chest medicine in the U.S. We love CHEST because the show connects a global community around not just networking and new technology, but brings together new research, instruction and interactive simulations too. If you’re a veteran of CHEST you probably know your way around the show. If you haven’t been before or need a refresher, here’s our quick “Guide to CHEST2016.”1. Push Your Medical Education It can be hard to complete continuing medical education credentials…
User Stories: A Clear Path for Ambulatory Care
The Clinique Juge is a Marseille clinic specialising in ambulatory surgery. Combining regional anaesthesia with focused pre- and post-operative care, the clinic aims to allow patients to return home soon after orthopaedic surgery, often on the same day as their procedure. Anaesthetist Dr Philippe Grillo explains the benefits of this approach, and the role of point-of-care ultrasound in ensuring effective nerve blocks and post-operative pain relief."We treat around 15,000 patients a year, and have been using regional anaesthesia for approximately eight years to accelerate post-operative…
User Stories: 25 Years of Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Anaesthesia
Dr. Thomas Grau, Head of Anaesthesia, Surgery, Intensive Care, Emergency Medicine and Pain at the Gütersloh Clinic, first studied ultrasound for a PhD on spinal imaging at Heidelberg University Hospital in the 1990s. 25 years on, he reflects on the role point-of-care ultrasound now plays in anaesthesia. "My first encounters with ultrasound were guided by efforts in Heidelberg to improve epidural anaesthesia in obstetrics. We identified that using point-of-care ultrasound to guide the needles could potentially help doctors to implement more effective epidurals more quickly, and might also…