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Dr. Russell Engevik is an emergency room physician from California who volunteers with Lighthouse Medical Missions.

FUJIFILM Sonosite has donated two M-Turbo point-of-care ultrasound systems to the non-governmental sea rescue organization Proactiva Open Arms, based in Badalona, Spain, to support efforts in rescuing refugees.

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 centers are looking for new ways to treat pain without prescribing addictive opioid painkillers.

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.

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.

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 imaging 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

Vietnam’s wild elephant population has dropped from over 2,000 animals to less than 100 in 20 years, making the country’s 60 or so captive elephants vital to preserving the genetic lines of this critically endangered species.

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.

Increasingly, anesthesiologists have been using ultrasound guidance to help visualize soft tissue anatomy and nerve location while performing regional nerve blocks. Correct placement of local anesthetics lead to long lasting pain management and enhanced recovery times.

But beyond the block, how does ultrasound help anesthesiologists do their jobs?

The answer has a lot to do with the changing practice of medicine.

Increasingly, anesthesiologists have been using ultrasound guidance to help visualize soft tissue anatomy and nerve location while performing regional nerve blocks. Correct placement of local anesthetics lead to long lasting pain management and enhanced recovery times.

But beyond the block, how does ultrasound help anesthesiologists do their jobs?

The answer has a lot to do with the changing practice of medicine.

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.

In the world of emergency medicine, there’s nothing fun about the guessing game. With a seriously ill or injured patient, every second counts and the wrong diagnosis can actually have a significant impact on health. That’s why having all available information is absolutely critical to stabilizing patients and saving lives.

That’s also what makes point-of-care ultrasound so critically important in emergency care.

When you think of manatee migration, you don’t normally picture aircraft.

But that is how Washburn the pregnant manatee was transported from Massachusetts, where she was rescued (just off the coast) to Sea World in Orlando, Florida, where she spent 2 weeks recuperating.

It’s no secret that the U.S. is in the throes of a major heroin epidemic, at least partly caused by the over-prescription of opioid painkillers by well-meaning physicians. When it comes to perioperative pain control, there are new ways to tackle patient discomfort without resorting to prescription opioids.