His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales recently visited Pool House Equine Clinic to mark the opening of a new, purpose-built facility in Fradley, near Lichfield. This multimillion pound centre will support the provision of advanced equine veterinary services in the Midlands, and the practice has chosen a FUJIFILM Sonosite Edge II portable ultrasound system to meet the needs of its growing business.
Senior Partner Richard Stephenson commented: “It was a great honour and pleasure to have His Royal Highness visit our new premises, and our staff eagerly anticipated meeting Prince Charles and showing him the wonderful facilities we now have. Pool House is a well-known practice – we’ve been in existence for over 150 years – and we have developed a reputation as a specialist equine imaging centre, with radiography, ultrasound and MRI capabilities. The new facility has been designed to give us increased theatre capacity and stabling, and we needed an additional ultrasound system to match this expansion.”
“The demands of equine practice mean that ultrasound is often required in difficult circumstances, and we need systems that can cope with extreme temperatures, dust, straw, mud, water and the occasional knock. Many pieces of equipment used in veterinary medicine were originally intended for a human clinical environment, so can’t stand up to the rigors of our work – they’re simply not fit for purpose. However, Sonosite systems are perfect for us; they’re robust, highly portable and very intuitive to use, which is important for intermittent ultrasound users.”
“We have had Sonosite ultrasound machines since the launch of the TITAN many years ago, and have had a number of TITAN and MicroMaxx systems over the years. Many of these instruments are still in daily use – a testament to the robustness of Sonosite equipment – and are integral to our daily practice, whether we’re assessing a tendon injury, scanning a mare in foal or diagnosing a colic.”
“The Edge II is even better suited to veterinary use than our previous systems, and it’s undoubtedly a leap forward in imaging. Not only does it offer very good image quality – not just by portable ultrasound standards, but generally – it is also highly portable. The instrument’s sleek design is very well thought out, and includes a sealed keypad to allow easy adjustments with lower risk of water ingress, which is a real hazard in our work. Its Armored Cable Technology is also a real bonus, and helps to protect the junctions between the machine and the probe from damage – a weakness with other brands of ultrasound system we’ve tried. Overall, we’ve been really impressed, it’s genuinely a very good machine.”
Learn More About the Sonosite Edge II
An equine veterinarian’s day can be unpredictable and so can their patients. Sonosite's Edge II takes the guesswork out of imaging with a great diagnostic image that is easy to obtain. With fast boot up to scan, Sonosite's Edge II enables the practioner to focus on the patient instead of adjusting or optimizing the ultrasound machine.
