Emergency physicians must make life-saving decisions as quickly as possible to choose the correct treatment and direct patients to an appropriate hospital. Emergency department chief Dr. Sylvain Benenati and emergency doctor Dr. David Sapir, both from Melun Hospital in France, discuss how the dynamic nature of point-of-care ultrasound makes it invaluable in these busy environments.
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. Philippe Mahiou practices anesthesia in the Grenoble area of France, splitting his time between a private clinic and working as a helicopter doctor attending mountaineering accidents. As part of his work, Dr. Mahiou routinely uses ultrasound, and understands the importance of the technology for both guiding anesthesia in the operating room and assessing patients in the field.
In a July 2019 study published in Annals of Emergency Medicine, researchers determined that ultrasound-guided line insertions improves the first-attempt success rates over traditional palpation methods for children with predicted difficult access.
During recent floods in the southern Indian province of Kerala, the Kerala Flood Disaster relief team sent by Kasturba Medical College, Mani
Point-of-care ultrasound plays an important role in the emergency sector, enabling hospital clinicians and paramedics responding to an urgent call for medical assistance to assess a patient’s condition. Dr Matthew Reed, an Emergency Medicine consultant at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, explains how ultrasound contributes to the management of cardiac arrest:
Emergency doctor Dr. Didier Moens is in charge of rescue missions in the Centre Médical Héliporté (CMH) of Bra sur Lienne, near Liège in Belgium. He believes access to point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) on emergency helicopters is now essential for improving the care of critically ill patients:
Dr. Justin Kirk-Bayley is the Clinical Director of Therapeutics at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford, England. Dr. Kirk-Bayley is an expert in the use of ultrasound in the ICU and anesthesiology.
For Sonosite’s ongoing series of interviews of physicians working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Medical Officer Diku Mandavia, M.D. interviewed Dr. Justin Kirk-Bayley in Guilford, England about his experiences fighting the coronavirus. You can watch the interview on our COVID-19 Ultrasound Resources site.