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Point-of-care ultrasound is efficient. It is non-invasive. It is safe. And fortunately for everyone, it is becoming more and more ubiquitous. 

St. Joseph Regional Medical Centre in Paterson, New Jersey has been among the forefront of medical providers who are attempting to stem the U.S. opioid addiction epidemic where it often starts: the Emergency Department.

Dr. Adam Garnett, a sports and exercise medicine (SEM) consultant at the Jersey Sports Medicine Clinic, divides his time between treating rugby players suffering from acute trauma injuries and triathletes and runners with overuse injuries.

Point-of-care ultrasound is an essential tool for Dr. Mark Ridgewell, an early pioneer of sport and exercise medicine (SEM). Through the course of his career, Mark has worked with many amateur and professional sportsmen and women, beginning with rugby and including three years with England Cricket and eight years with the Wales football team.

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. 

Medical imageing offers life-saving insights into patient health—and perhaps no other imageing 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.

Time is of the essence in an emergency situation, and may be the difference between life and death.  Ambulance crews on the front line must decide rapidly whether or not a patient is suffering from a life-threatening condition requiring specialist treatment, and point-of-care ultrasound can provide vital guidance. 

FUJIFILM Sonosite is delighted to announce that we have recently sold our 100,000th system. 

A Sonosite X-Porte, our premier kiosk ultrasound system, was delivered to a hospital in California in early October. 

More than five million central venous catheter (CVC) lines are placed in hospitals each year, making it one of the most common invasive emergency room procedures.

FUJIFILM Sonosite’s M-Turbo point-of-care (POC) ultrasound systems will soon be providing pre-hospital diagnostics across the Scottish Highlands as part of the innovative SatCare trial. This study aims to combine POC ultrasound and advanced communications to enable remote image interpretation and decision making for a range of time-critical conditions.

Point-of-care ultrasound is fast becoming a key instrumental technique in nephrology , supporting diagnostics and improving delivery of renal replacement therapy and subsequent vascular monitoring.

What differentiates FUJIFILM Sonosite?

Sonosite was founded with a mission to provide ultrasound machines that were tough and portable enough to withstand the chaos of battlefield hospitals. However, our interest in providing useful medical solutions did not end with the military; instead, it grew over time. Sonosite began to see the potential for portable ultrasound to improve patient outcomes in almost any medical setting.

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

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

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

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.

Point-of-care ultrasound plays an important role in the emergency sector, enabling hospital clinicians and paramedics responding to an urgent call for medical assistance to assess a patient’s condition. Dr Matthew Reed, an Emergency Medicine consultant at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, explains how ultrasound contributes to the management of cardiac arrest:

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.

by Rich Fabian, Chief Operating Officer, FUJIFILM Sonosite

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?