POCUS Profile: Dr. Jennifer Hanko
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is widely used in nephrology for guiding the creation of fistulas and informing decisions on their viability and performance for dialysis. Dr. Jennifer Hanko is a consultant nephrologist at Belfast City Hospital, a 900-bed modern university teaching hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Here, she explains the impact of POCUS on her clinical practise and describes the benefits, for both staff and patients, of using POCUS.I originally learned to use ultrasound for vascular mapping and arteriovenous (AV) fistula assessment during a fellowship in…
POCUS Profile: Dr. Fidel Fernandez
Ultrasound is a vital tool for vascular surgeons in the 21st century. In the following essay, Dr. Fidel Fernández Quesada, a sixth-generation vascular surgeon and associate professor at the University of Granada, Spain, describes the difference that ultrasound has made to his clinical practise, 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…
Sonosite and Bridge To Health: POCUS Training in Uganda
To celebrate 20 years of helping clinicians bring ultrasound to the point of care, Sonosite partnered with Canadian NGO Bridge To Health and Uganda's Kigezi Healthcare Foundation (KIHEFO) to help them train Ugandan medical officers on how to diagnose paediatric pneumonia and scan breast masses to rule out cancer.As Bridge To Health's Founder and Chair Dr. William Cherniak puts it, "Bridge To Health's principle is partnership. That's what makes us so different than other global health programmes. "With that philosophy of partnership in mind, Bridge to Health worked with Sonosite's Global…
20 Years of Sonosite: Bringing Ultrasound to the Forefront of Global Health
According to the World Health Organisation, much of the world’s population has no access to ultrasound imaging. From the jungles of Panama to the mountains of Nepal, the clinicians that are a part of our Global Health Programme and help bring ultrasound to the point of patient care are our greatest source of inspiration. As we celebrate 20 years of Sonosite ultrasound this year we're taking a look back at some of the most critical and complex global health cases from the past two decades. Fulfiling a Promise To Iraq with Point-of-Care UltrasoundMosul, Iraq’s second largest city…
Point-of-Care Ultrasonography in Critical Care
ICU Management & Practice
Dr. Gulrukh Zaidi, MD and Prof. Seth Koenig, MD
Physicians have used ultrasonography for more than half a century to aid diagnoses and guide procedures, but the advent of portable ultrasound systems that physicians can use to see and assess physiological function firsthand, and in real time, has revolutionized patient care in the intensive care unit. This shift from traditional ultrasound, in which a technician and/or consulting radiologist obtains and interprets patient ultrasound images, reduces dissociation in patient care and shortens time-to-diagnosis.…
Point-of-Care Ultrasound Helps Make Regional Anaesthesia Quicker and Safer, and Improves Patient Comfort
Clinical Services Journal
Dr. Jim Corcoran, Clinical Director Perioperative Care, Salford Royal Hospital
Ultrasound guidance has proven invaluable for the regional neurosurgical center at the Salford Royal Hospital, outside Manchester, England. In addition to helping to improve patient safety, ultrasound is increasingly being used to guide regional anesthesia, offering a variety of benefits. Jim Corcoran, consultant neuroanesthetist and clinical director for perioperative care at the Salford Royal, says that ultrasound guidance also allows anesthetists to reduce the amount of anesthetic…
Harvard Study Finds Significant Cost Savings with POCUS Use
According to a study conducted by Harvard researchers, emergency physicians in community-hospital settings that chose to use diagnostic point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in patient care saved patients, insurance companies, and hospitals significant sums of money, even if the results of an ultrasound did not alter a care path.Published online Dec. 28 in the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, the 3-month study involved ER physicians at 213-bed Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.The team used data from Medicare fee Schedules published by the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid…
Teaching USGRA in Papua New Guinea
An advocate for the expansion of the use of point-of-care ultrasound, Dr. Yasmin Endlich is an anaesthesiologist who practises medicine in Australia and regularly travels to Papua New Guinea to provide medical training to local physicians. Here, she explains why nerve blocks are a crucial tool in a rural anaesthetist’s arsenal:Papua New Guinea, a country of over 8 million people, is looked after by less than 30 anaesthetists, half of whom are still in training. Not coincidentally, I have actually met every anaesthetist in Papua New Guinea.This year, the 54th Medical Symposium was held in…
Doctors Without Borders: Using Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Sudan
Dr. Achai Bulabek is a clinical officer with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). At age 28, she is currently serving a region between Sudan and South Sudan (her native country). Her hospital recently adopted a point-of-care ultrasound system (POCUS) that is now frequently used to diagnose patient trauma and guide needle-based procedures such as paracentesis and thoracentesis.In a blogpost on the MSF website, Dr. Bulabek describes several cases in which the use of POCUS helped diagnose and treat patients quickly and effectively."Since we started using the new ultrasound, something has changed…
Point-Of-Care Ultrasound Helps Make Regional Anaesthesia Quicker And Safer
Ultrasound-guidance has proven invaluable for the regional neurosurgical centre at the Salford Royal Hospital outside Manchester, England. In addition to helping to improve patient safety, ultrasound is increasingly being used to guide regional anaesthesia, offering a variety of benefits.Jim Corcoran, consultant neuroanaesthetist and clinical director for perioperative care at the Salford Royal, says that ultrasound-guidance also allows anaesthetists to reduce the amount of anaesthetic required to effectively block a nerve region (10-20 ml versus 30-40 ml using landmark/nerve stimulation…
Portable Ultrasound: Revolutionising Critical Care
Sonosite-portable-ultrasound.png The increased adoption of portable ultrasound has transformed critical care by helping physicians make precise bedside diagnoses in critically ill patients.Safe, accurate, non-invasive, and affordable, point-of care-ultrasound is gaining popularity over other imaging modalities (like X-ray) as it does not expose patients to ionising radiations.Since it is difficult to move unstable/subconscious patients with mechanical ventilation and other specialised intensive support to other areas of the hospitals (for ultrasound/MRI/CT imaging), it is…
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…