How does ultrasound-guided vascular access improve care and reduce costs?

Any medical professional with hospital experience knows how crucial peripheral IV access can be. Getting fluids and medications into a critically ill or injured patient can make or break the effectiveness of their treatment.

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.

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.

The Race Across America is billed as the world’s toughest bicycle race; a non-stop, coast-to-coast, transcontinental trek from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland.

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. 

Point-of-care (POC) ultrasound has a great deal to offer clinicians specialising in sports and exercise medicine, and we have some stories to share with you. Earlier this year, we published Dr Adam Garnett’s experience using POC ultrasound at the Jersey Sports Medical Clinic, and Sonosite Spain recently released a video – with subtitles!

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.