FUJIFILM Sonosite lends a helping hand to Healing Little Hearts
FUJIFILM Sonosite has once again supplied loan equipment to cardiac teams travelling out to perform life-saving surgery on children in India on behalf of the charity Healing Little Hearts (HLH). HLH was launched as an official registered charity in 2007 to provide free heart surgery to poor children in developing countries. Starting with just occasional trips, the charity now organises regular visits to 19 centres, many in India and, more recently, at sites in Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius and Malaysia.
A UK-based Consultant in Paediatric Cardiac Anaesthesia and Intensive Care took…
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…
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 generalised 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…
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-…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Enhancing Sports and Exercise Medicine with Point-of-Care Ultrasound
Point-of-care (POC) ultrasound has a great deal to offer clinicians specialising in sports and exercise medicine, and we have some stories to share with you. Earlier this year, we published Dr Adam Garnett’s experience using POC ultrasound at the Jersey Sports Medical Clinic, and Sonosite Spain recently released a video – with subtitles! – following the work of Dr Miguel Angel Buil, chief of medical services for the Spanish premier league football side Levante UD.
We thought we would take a moment to catch up with Dr Dane Vishnubala and discuss his experience of using POC ultrasound in his…
Global Health: The IWISH Foundation and Sonosite Ultrasound Machines in Haiti
Audrey E. Stryker, MD, an Ob/Gyn and partner at Women's Ob-Gyn, P.C., has been traveling to underdeveloped countries with Sonosite ultrasound systems since 2004. As a part of the IWISH Foundation (International Women & Infant Sustainable Healthcare), she and her colleagues recently travelled to Haiti to help train the next generation of medical professionals. This is her story."We've been traveling to underdeveloped countries since 2004, hoping to achieve a model that offers a sustainable means for countries to provide health care for their women and children. Haiti…
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…
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…
Integrating Ultrasound Services Into Your Practise - Five Reasons December 2016 Could Be The Right Time
Becker's Hospital Review
Jill Rathbun, Managing Partner at Galileo Consulting Group, Arlington, VA
Since the election there have been many articles written discussing the future of the Affordable Care Act under a President-Elect Trump Administration and a Republican Congress. It is important that physicians and office administrators understand the real impact by reading this article.
Beckers Integrating Ultrasound 1216.pdf
Reducing The Opioid Epidemic with POC Ultrasound
Every day, 91 Americans die from opioid (prescription drugs or heroin) overdoses. This is the worst drug epidemic in the history of the United States.
How can emergency physicians help patients manage pain without accidentally getting them addicted to prescription opioids?
While federal and local governments have been slow to respond to this health crisis, individual hospitals and medical centres have launched their own initiatives to begin tackling the problem of opioid abuse. Recognising that prescription opiates are often the first step toward opioid addiction, St. Joseph’s Health Care…
User Stories: St. Joseph's Reduces Time and Cost with POCUS Vascular Access
If you had to choose between inserting a PICC line (40-45 minutes) and inserting a PIV with ultrasound guidance (5-10 minutes), which would you choose to perform? What if your patient weighed less than 5 lbs? Or more than 500?
When you’re working with some of the smallest, most vulnerable patients, every single needle stick matters more than ever. Whether injecting critical medicine or drawing blood, St. Joseph’s Healthcare System in Paterson, New Jersey, strives to minimize patient pain during needle insertion.
“Before we had the Sonosite ultrasound technology, we had a lot of patients…
The Range of POCUS: Emergency Rooms to Vascular Access to Intensive Care Training
Did you know that Sonosite’s first mission was to create an ultrasound machine that could be carried into battle? The concept was simple: Get treatment to a trauma victim by giving a frontline clinician an ultrasound machine that could be brought to the patient’s side. Now point-of-care ultrasound is used around the world for an ever growing variety of clinical applications and procedures. Here's three user stories of how Sonosite systems have helped clinicians expand the range of what's possible using portable ultrasound. Quick and Acurate Vascular AccessThe Children’s Acute…