Case Study: Point-of-Care Ultrasound in Resuscitation Situations

How valuable is the use of point-of-care ultrasound in resuscitation situations? Consider the following case study, provided by Dr. Mark Mensour, ER physician, Assistant Professor at the Northern Ontario (Canada) School of Medicine and course developer for Emergency healthcare practitioners. …

Portable Ultrasound Machine for International Medical Missions

Sonosite handheld ultrasound for global health missions
Dr. Russell Engevik is an emergency room physician from California who volunteers with Lighthouse Medical Missions.He recently sent a video showing us how he utilises a borrowed Sonosite iViz while working with patients in the hospital in the small fishing village of Tanji, The Gambia. …

Global Health: FUJIFILM Sonosite Donates Ultrasound Systems to Refugee Rescue Organisation

FUJIFILM Sonosite Donates Portable Ultrasound Systems to Refugee Rescue Organization
 FUJIFILM Sonosite has donated two M-Turbo point-of-care ultrasound systems to the non-governmental sea rescue organisation Proactiva Open Arms, based in Badalona, Spain, to support efforts in rescuing refugees. …

Treating Acute Pain Without Opioids

For the past 20-odd years in the United States, traumatic and acute conditions have often been treated in the Emergency Room using opioid drugs. Now, with the effects of a nationwide opioid addiction crisis becoming increasingly dire, hospitals and trauma centres are looking for new ways to treat pain without prescribing addictive opioid painkillers. …

Sonosite Edge II at the 2017 Gaes Titan Desert Race

Sonosite Edge II at the Gaes Titan Desert in 2017
The Gaes Titan Desert by Garmin is a 6-day endurance bike race over mountain terrain; the 2017 edition takes place in Morocco. From April 30-May 5, the Titan Desert saw over 463 top-level mountain bikers cover 380 miles of unyielding desert in gruelling conditions. …

Ultrasound and Changes in Value-Based Care

Uncertainty – especially in economics, government, or healthcare - can be hard to handle. Combine a little bit of uncertainty in Washington D.C. and the medical community and you’ll have a window into 2017, a time when the future of the Affordable Health Care Act and the health sector is in flux. …

Global Health: Ultrasound Expands Access and Improves Maternal Care

Sonosite mobile ultrasound project
Every day, 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. 99% live in rural areas. Many of them could be prevented with proper maternal care including ultrasound imageing during their pregnancy and delivering in a medical clinic. Of those deaths, 40% are due to injuries or conditions related to placenta complications - and the only way to detect abnormal placenta challenges is through an ultrasound exam. …

POC Ultrasound Testing Speeds Diagnosis, Safety at the Bedside

POC Ultrasound Testing Speeds Diagnosis
Physicians today face a multitude of ever evolving challenges, and one thing we’ve seen is an increase in the demand for educational sessions covering the latest in ultrasound. Dr. …

3 Steps to Getting Buy-In For Your Ultrasound Programme

How To Get Buy-In For Your Bedside Ultrasound Program
Anyone who has ever tried to change the way medicine is practised knows that inertia makes it difficult to get buy-in from colleagues and administrators. Introducing a relatively familiar technology, like point-of-care ultrasound, into a broader hospital setting might not seem like a difficult task, but all procedural changes face some kind of resistance.In Germany, physicians at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus have been able to expand the application of POCUS through multiple wards using three methods. …

Anesthesia Ultrasound for Perioperative Care - Beyond the Block

Anesthesia Ultrasound for Perioperative Care
The role of the anesthesiologist is evolving to include perioperative care With hospitals seeking innovative ways to streamline patient care and improve outcomes, anesthesiologists are increasingly expected to provide patient care beyond general anesthesia and nerve blocks. But beyond the block, how does perioperative ultrasound help anesthesiologists do their jobs? The answer has a lot to do with the changing practice of medicine. …

Watch the Value of Endobronchial Ultrasound Webinar

Are you a pulmonologist, interventional pulmonologist, or thoracic surgeon? Check out our webinar “Lung Cancer: The State of the Disease,” from the Endoscopy Division of FUJIFILM. More people die every year from lung cancer than from colon, breast, and prostate cancer combined. In August 2016, we aired “Lung Cancer: The State of the Disease.” It’s a timely and informative webinar led by David Feller-Kopman, MD, Director of Bronchoscopy & Interventional Pulmonology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and a world-renowned expert in his field. …

Point-of-Care Ultrasound Shows Promise for Osgood-Schlatter Diagnosis

Osgood-Schlatter Diagnosis
Osgood-Schlatter disease is a developmental disorder that causes musculoskeletal problems and is rare in the normal population. However, the condition is more common in teenagers who play sports, affecting an estimated 3-5% percent of this population; it causes painful inflammation below the knee in adolescents and can lead to permanent soft tissue damage. …

The Range of POCUS: Emergency Rooms to Vascular Access to Intensive Care Training

Range of POCUS
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.  …

User Stories: Madrid's Emergency Services and Portable Ultrasound

Since point-of-care ultrasound systems were originally designed for dealing with emergencies in a battlefield setting, it's not surprising that ultrasound now plays a pivotal role in emergency vehicles around the world. Dr Ramón de Elías Hernandez, head of on-call doctors at SAMUR, Madrid’s municipal emergency service, describes the advantages that point-of-care ultrasound brings to his everyday life. …

Ultrasound-Guided Vascular Access Programme Saves St. Joseph's $3.5 Million

Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality Matthew Ostroff, ARNP The American College of Emergency Physicians issued a policy statement in 2016 advocating a new safety standard for vascular access through the use of ultrasound guidance. St. Joseph's Healthcare System, in Paterson, N.J., launched a programme that has yielded significant safety and quality of care improvements for all patients requiring vascular access. This article describes how St. Joseph's cut healthcare costs and improved patient outcomes by achieving the "one-stick standard". …

Six Secrets of Implementing Ultrasound in Paediatric Emergency Medicine

Becker's Hospital Review Russ Horowitz, MD, RDMS Ultrasound is an important tool for rapid assessment of trauma patients, CVC and regional nerve block placement, facilitating difficult PIV access, and assessing cardiac function during resuscitations. In this article, Russ Horowitz, MD, RDMS, discusses six strategies to help implement ultrasound at the bedside in paediatric emergency medicine. …

Proposed CMS Hospital Outpatient Department Rule Detrimental for Imaging Services in CY 2017

Healthcare Business News Jill Rathbun, Managing Partner at Galileo Consulting Group, Arlington, VA In this article for DOTmed News, Jill Rathbun discusses the proposed CMS hospital outpatient department rule and how it will impact imaging services in CY 2017. Read more to understand how payments may be restructured to reduce the total number of classifications. …

Performance-Based Payment & Orthopedics: A Focus For The Medicare Program

Becker's Hospital CFO Jill Rathbun, Managing Partner at Galileo Consulting Group, Arlington, VA In this informative article for Becker's CFO, Jill Rathbun covers the newly implemented CMS Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement payment model. While the program began April 1, 2016, many of the hospitals were not, and are still not, prepared to participate. Read more to understand the basics of the model and how to be successful. …

8 Ways to Avoid Central Line Placement Complications

Placing a central venous catheter using ultrasound guidance
Central line complications: they’re risky, costly, and all-around burden to healthcare. Whether it’s CLABSIs or iatrogenic pneumothoraces, CVC complications are not just terrifying for patients and unnerving for doctors; they are also costly for medical facilities. Fortunately, there are tested methods for Iatrogenic Pneumothorax Prevention with POCUS that can drastically reduce complication rates (and associated costs) for critically ill patients who require venous catheterization.  …

Ultrasound Care for Endangered Species of Warty Pig [Video]

Dakila the endangered Visayan warty pig gets an echocardiogram at the Pittsburgh Zoo
Veterinary patients can be such pigs.  At the Pittsburgh Zoo, they are occasionally lethargic, critically endangered warty pigs. One of the Zoo’s three resident Visayan pigs, Dakila, who is 8 years old, is one such patient. Her veterinary care team, led by Dr. Ginger Sturgeon, pays particular attention to Dakila’s care. …