Schistosomiasis, a disease that is common in sub-Saharan Africa, is particularly widespread in Madagascar. The Schistosoma mansoni parasite responsible for the disease is linked to fibrotic changes in the liver which can be detected using point-of-care ultrasound. Dr. Hannah Russell described how point-of-care ultrasound was put to the test in remote locations during an expedition to study the disease in Malagasy school children.
by Dr. Ben LaBrot, founder of Floating Doctors
As 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.
Point-of-care (POC) ultrasound is helping to improve the quality of life for metastatic breast cancer
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.
Point-of-care ultrasound is a valuable tool for successful dialysis fistula surgery, allowing pre-operative mapping to find a suitable site and post operative fistula scanning to check for stenosis and adequate blood flow.
Anna Jerram, a clinical vascular scientist at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, discusses the role POC ultrasound played during a recent trip to The Gambia to provide critical fistula surgery to patients.
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.
Dr. Alfredo Tirado is from Florida Hospital in Orlando, and has been leading an emergency response mission in Puerto Rico to help with Hurricane Maria relief.
Dr. Thomas Sullivan recently returned from Quang Nam province in Vietnam, where he had volunteered at a series of clinics in late July, with the assistance of ASSORV through the Vietnam Health Clinic group of the University of Washington.
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.
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 utilizes a borrowed Sonosite iViz while working with patients in the hospital in the small fishing village of Tanji, The Gambia.