10 Important Applications of Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Pediatric Emergency Medicine
Becker's Hospital Review
Jennifer R. Marin, MD, MSc
With the end of summer and children heading back to school and organized athletics, there will inevitably be injuries that may require a trip to the local hospital emergency room and clinicians need to be prepared. This article by Dr. Jennifer Marin discusses ten important applications for ultrasound used at the point-of-care to diagnose medical issues in pediatrics. Dr. Marin also discusses the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics recently published its first policy statement endorsing the use of ultrasound at the point-of-care by…
Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Block, an ED Opioid Alternative
Anesthesiology News
Alexis LaPietra, DO
With the opioid epidemic ever present in US hospitals, emergency physicians working with anesthesiologists 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 program focused on novel alternatives to opioid prescriptions for pain. The ALTOSM (Alternatives To Opioids) program uses alternatives such as…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Ilyas Tugtekin
Dr. Ilyas Tugtekin, a consultant anesthetist from Ulm University Medical Center in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, travels to Kumasi, Ghana to help establish an ultrasound training center for doctors all over West Africa.
Funded by the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation – a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting medical research and related humanitarian projects – a team of five specialists spent a week at Ghana’s second largest hospital, the 1,000-bed Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, teaching ultrasound-guided techniques, including POCUS-guided regional nerve blocks…
Ultrasound for Neonate & Pediatric Care
Ultrasound imaging has become imperative in neonatal & pediatric 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…
Four Ways Ultra-Portable Ultrasound Provides Fast Answers For Superbike Racing
Motorsports are risky, so employing an experienced medical response team is crucial. FUJIFILM Sonosite recently became an Official Supplier of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship (BSB) 2018, and the Sonosite iViz became a valuable addition to the medical team’s toolbox for enabling rapid assessment to help triage injuries and identify complex medical conditions, either at the trackside or in the mobile clinic.
So how does the Sonosite iViz fit into this carefully choreographed medical response? Here are four ways the Sonosite iViz contributes to excellent…
Achieving One-Stick Vascular Access, Value-Based Care for Patients
Axis Imaging News
Diku Mandavia, MD, FACEP, FRCPC, Chief Medical Officer at FUJIFILM Sonosite
Vascular access is one of the most commonly performed procedures in U.S. hospitals as up to 70% of patients require a peripheral intravenous (PIV) catheter during their stay. Each year, 200 million PIV catheterizations are performed. The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) recommended in a 2016 policy statement that procedural ultrasound be utilized to facilitate access. In this article, Dr. Mandavia discusses patient safety improvements that are achieved in vascular access with "the…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Nathaniel Meuser-Herr
Pneumonia is a major cause of childhood mortality and morbidity globally – particularly in resource-poor environments – and diagnosis of pneumonia can be complex. The current gold standard diagnostic technique is a chest X-ray, looking for the presence or absence of areas of consolidation on the lungs. However X-ray facilities are not always available in remote locations.
Dr. Nathaniel Meuser-Herr led a University of Minnesota research project to investigate the potential of point-of-care ultrasound as an alternative tool for the diagnosis of pneumonia in paediatric patients in Uganda, and…
POCUS Profile: Dr. José Luis Vázquez Martínez
Doctors working in the eight-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital in Madrid use point-of-care ultrasound extensively to evaluate the condition of critically ill children, and find it essential to their work. Dr. José Luis Vázquez Martínez, Head of Post-Surgical Critical Care at Hospital Ramón y Cajal has over 25 years’ experience in pediatric intensive care medicine. He recently described how his department uses ultrasound with some of the smallest patients.
"Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is used extensively in our unit, allowing comprehensive, head-…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch
Point-of-care ultrasound is playing an important role in the anesthesiology department at Spain’s Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch, Senior Doctor and Head of Section in the hospital’s Department of Anesthesiology 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 Anesthesia and Intensive Care at Pinderfields General Hospital in Wakefield, England, plays an integral role in the company’s Complete Ultrasound-guided Regional Anesthesia 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 practice. I was approached to join the CURE faculty a few years ago as I was already running some ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia training courses, and was…
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 program, 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…
Who Orders the Most MSK Extremity Imaging?
Researchers obtained data from the public Medicare files to find data on provider referral for medical imaging to identify the providers referring MSK extremity imaging examinations to radiologists.
The results? In 2014, a total of 4,275,647 MSK extremity imaging examinations were ordered. But who referred the highest percentage of cases to radiology for extremity imaging?
Emergency medicine
Rheumatology
Orthopedic surgery
Internal medicine
The winner, at 37.6% is…Orthopedic surgery!
Pie Chart MSK Extremity Imaging Orders by Medical Specialty.png…
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 program 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…
Medical Device Warranties: Fine Print, Major Total Cost Implications
Becker's Hospital CFO Report
Rich Fabian, Chief Operation Officer, FUJIFILM Sonosite
Most of us think of warranties as a way to save money because they reduce the possibility of spending money in the future. This article from FUJIFILM Sonosite’s Chief Operating Officer, Rich Fabian, outlines that not all warranties are created equal and this could have implications for the total cost of owning an ultrasound system over its lifetime. The article shares how the fine print of a warranty document can matter, particularly as it relates to what items are expected from the warranty. In the case of…
Improving the Safety and Quality of Pediatric Emergency Care With Point-of-Care Ultrasound: Part 2
Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection ControlStephanie J. Doniger, MD, RDMS, FAAP, FACEP
In the second part of this article that discusses how point-of-care ultrasound can improve the safety and quality of care delivered to children in an emergency room or department, Dr. Stephanie Doniger continues to outline important diagnostic and procedural applications of ultrasound used at the point-of-care. Dr. Doniger writes about using ultrasound-guided vascular access to achieve the “one-stick standard,” especially with pediatric patients, particularly those who are smaller, dehydrated or…
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…
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…
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 fetal 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 ionizing radiation. These days, ultrasound is…
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 generalized 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…