Disaster Relief Team Borrows Ultrasound for Flood Victims
During recent floods in the southern Indian province of Kerala, the Kerala Flood Disaster relief team sent by Kasturba Medical College, Manipal borrowed a Sonosite M-Turbo ultrasound machine to assist in assessing and triaging flood victims.
The team arrived in Chengannur, one of the worst-afflicted areas of the flood zone, and began working at the District Hospital.
Dr. Jayaraj Balakrishnan, Professor and Head of Emergency Medicine at Kasturba Medical College, reported that the machine was used to assess roughly 570 flood victims who were treated in the District Hospital. He sent…
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…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Frances Chow
Anesthesiologist Dr. Frances Chow works to bring ultrasound-guided nerve blocks to British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada. British Columbia Cancer Agency has among the best cancer outcomes in the world, including highest of the G7 countries for childhood leukemia, and second highest survival rates across 67 countries for prostate and breast cancer.[1]
BC Cancer covers the entire spectrum of cancer care, from prevention and screening to diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. They operate six regional cancer centers and are dedicated to finding the causes of cancer, and…
Fullfilling a promise to Mosul with Point-Of-Care Ultrasound
Mosul, Iraq’s second city, is slowly rebuilding its healthcare infrastructure after years of war and destruction. Dr Henryk Pich, a consultant anaesthetist and intensive carephysician at the University of Dresden,
Germany, visited the region soon after the fighting had ended, supported by the independent aid organisation CADUS. Moved by the makeshift treatment centres he witnessed in the hospital ruins, he promised the skeleton team of local doctors at the paediatric hospital that he would return, bringing with him much needed equipment and training resources.
Dr Henryk Pich…
Join the Redesigned Sonosite Institute Today!
Have you ever considered using point-of-care ultrasound but didn’t know where to begin?FUJIFILM Sonosite customers have a powerful tool to help them ramp up their scanning skills, making the POCUS learning curve a lot less steep.We’re excited to announce the redesign of Sonosite Institute, our online education portal for POCUS that’s only for Sonosite customers. More good news? Sonosite Institute membership is included in the purchase of a Sonosite ultrasound system.You already know that using ultrasound at the point of care can improve patient care paths and outcomes. Now, access the tools…
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…
Point-of-care ultrasound: the eyes and hands our forefathers never imagined
Ultrasound is a vital tool for vascular surgeons in the 21stcentury. Dr Fidel Fernández Quesada, a sixth-generation vascular surgeon and associate professor at the University of Granada, Spain, describes the difference it has made to his clinical practice and reflects on what his forefathers would have made of such technological advancement.
I have worked in the field of angiology and vascular surgery for 25 years, and currently practise both at the San Cecilio University Hospital in Granada and privately. I am also the current president of the Phlebology and Lymphology division…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Farah Chaudhry
Dr. Farah Chaudhry, Consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Leeds Sexual Health, West Yorkshire, describes how point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) allows her to give informed and clear assurances to women using long-acting contraception.I spent 10 years as a GP (general practitinoer) in Leeds, developing a special interest and expertise in women’s health, in particular complex contraception. After that, I decided to pursue the specialty of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) full time. I managed the complex contraception clinics in Kirklees and Bradford for Locala Community…
Point-of-care ultrasound offers peace of mind for women’s health
Dr Farah Chaudhry, Consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Health for Leeds Sexual Health, West Yorkshire, describes how point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) allows her to give informed and clear assurances to women using long-acting contraception.
I spent 10 years as a GP in Leeds, developing a special interest and expertise in women’s health, in particular complex contraception. After that, I decided to pursue the specialty of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) full time. I managed the complex contraception clinics in Kirklees and Bradford for Locala Community Partnerships – an…
Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Block, an ED Opioid Alternative
Anaesthesiology News
Alexis LaPietra, DO
With the opioid epidemic ever present in US hospitals, emergency physicians working with anaesthesiologists 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 programme focused on novel alternatives to opioid prescriptions for pain. The ALTOSM (Alternatives To Opioids) programme uses alternatives such…
Sonosite Ultrasound – a tool to enhance triage for the British Superbikes
FUJIFILM Sonosite has recently become an Official Supplier of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship (BSB), providing point-of-care ultrasound systems to support the first-class care of riders and teams competing in the championship. The company’s robust and highly portable ultrasound systems will provide the BSB medical team with on-site imaging capabilities, complementing clinical examinations to provide fast and accurate triage of patients. Dr Heike Romer, Chief Medical Officer for the championship, described how ultrasound will be used.
Motorcycle racing is an…
Sonosite; A helping hand for paediatric intensive care
Doctors working in the eight-bed Paediatric 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 itessential to their work.Dr José Luis Vázquez Martínez, Head of UCIP at Hospital Ramón y Cajal, with over 25 years’ experience in paediatric intensive care medicine, explained.
“Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is used extensively in our unit, allowing comprehensive, head-to-toe assessment of critically ill children, including respiratory, oncology and post-operative…
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-…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch
Point-of-care ultrasound is playing an important role in the anaesthesiology department at Spain’s Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. Dr. Xavier Sala-Blanch, Senior Doctor and Head of Section in the hospital’s Department of Anaesthesiology 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 Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at Pinderfields General Hospital in Wakefield, England, plays an integral role in the company’s Complete Ultrasound-guided Regional Anaesthesia 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 practise. I was approached to join the CURE faculty a few years ago as I was already running some ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia training courses, and was…
Sonosite iViz Helps Make Dialysis More Comfortable
Point-of-care ultrasound is an essential tool for busy nephrology departments, and dialysis units in particular. Dr. Christoph C. Haufe, clinical lead at an outpatient dialysis center in Erfurt, Germany, discusses the use of the technique in daily practice and his involvement in ultrasound training.
The nephrology center in Erfurt is an outpatient dialysis unit for people living locally and a center of renal care. The associated renal department is a regional specialist nephrology hospital that treats inpatients suffering from a range of kidney complaints from across a wide area of eastern…
Ultrasound for Neonate & Paediatric Care
Ultrasound imaging has become imperative in neonatal & paediatric 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…
Driving regional anaesthesia with Sonosite point-of-care ultrasound
Point-of-care ultrasound is playing an important role in the anaesthesiology department at Spain’s Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. Dr Xavier Sala-Blanch, Senior Doctor and Head of Section in the hospital’s Department of Anaesthesiology 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 a 800-bed, level three hospital serving a local population of…