Bedside Ultrasound in Emergency Medicine

Bedside ultrasound in emergency medicine has quickly become a modern way of screening patients on an immediate basis. Bedside ultrasound usage is promoted by the fact that ultrasound machines are now becoming highly portable and highly accurate. Another contributing factor has been the increasing acceptance of bedside ultrasound in the medical emergency practice. As more and more medical professionals become graduates with understanding of these techniques, there is an increasing demand for bedside ultrasound machine in emergency medicine field.

Bedside ultrasound machines sport the following features,

• Smaller and lighter in size. Portable bedside ultrasound machines also offer inbuilt batteries and back up

• Cost of bedside ultrasound machine is quickly becoming lower. You now do not require expensive or complicated machinery. In fact, bedside ultrasound machines are available for as low as $25,000

• These are highly portable. You can carry them in your medical van or throughout the hospital floor or emergency departments (ED)

• Bedside ultrasound is highly durable. It can be carried in diverse terrain especially during emergency and hostile situations like earthquakes. They have spill resistant and foldable keyboards, special probe cover, rubber or plastic protective side bumpers, etc

• Bedside ultrasounds provide a vast variety of probes suitable for all types of diagnostics. For example, abdominal and chest scan requires probes of different size and shape whereas vaginal or small organ scanning requires smaller probes. Most probes and transducers can be programmed as required. A small footprint probe operating at 3.5 MHz is commonly used for major emergency diagnostics

• Most of these machines can provide live output such output to a console monitor or screen, thermal printouts and various portable storage media such as DVD's or CD's

The benefits of bedside ultrasound in emergency medicine are,

• Extremely fast and timely diagnosis

• Better patient outcomes with reduction of complications

• The patients do not have to wait in line for the procedures

• Reduces medico-legal issues because of faster diagnostics and treatments while providing proof of assessment on recordable media

• Simpler and easy to learn and can be practiced easily by emergency medicine physicians

• Provides accurate fast exam ultrasound

Most doctors and patients have questions about bedside ultrasound relating to its usage and efficacy. Bedside ultrasound in emergency medicine is used widely in the following conditions,

• Whenever there are space limitations, mobility is important, cost factors require low cost equipment and learning period must be low.

• Most emergency medicine diagnostics and treatments are focused on particular set of criteria that can easily determine a particular ailment within a very short time.

• The good part about such equipment is that it does not require high dosages or exposure to radiation and is cheaper than other procedures such as computed tomography scans.

• Another advantage of bedside ultrasound in emergency medicine is that it is less invasive and requires no or minimal surgical procedures.

Bedside Ultrasound in Emergency Medicine is indicated in following scenarios,

• Trauma such as accidents and injuries to diagnose pericardial effusion or hemoperitoneum

• Breathlessness or dyspnea and hypotension due to reduced blood pressure and oxygen level due to pneumonia, pneumothorax, aneurysm, dissection, rupture, acute interstitial syndrome and pleural effusion

• Cardiac arrest or heart related disorders and chest pain due to various diseases. Helps in determining valvular abnormalities, pericardial effusion, systolic and diastolic function, tamponade, cardiac changes in cardiac arrest

• Sudden stomach, liver, kidney related issues such as abdominal pain, especially pain due to gallstones, cholecystitis, or choledocholithiasis

• Testicular pain in men and issues such as early pregnancy in women. Issues such as normal and ectopic pregnancy, intrauterine pregnancy, probability of miscarriage etc can be diagnosed quickly

• Presence of abscess and cellulitis or musculoskeletal disorders

• Useful for procedural guidance during treatment and diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis, paracentesis, thoracentesis, central venous cannulation, peripheral IV placement, arthrocentesis, pericardiocentesis and dealing with nerve blocks

Thus, bedside ultrasound has become a necessity in most hospitals providing emergency medicine. If you are a patient caught in a medical emergency, do suggest using bedside ultrasound for faster diagnosis. On the other hand, if you are a hospital manager or a doctor do consider installing bedside ultrasound for emergency medicine treatment and diagnosis. Last but not least, do feel free to ask questions about bedside ultrasound in emergency medicine.