by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | December 21, 2015
From the December 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
With traditional ultrasound, a clinician’s job is to get an image that is so compelling that it influences another physician to do something. But with point-of-care ultrasound, the physicians’ only job is to convince themselves. “They both care about image quality and they both care about seeing well, but their purposes are quite different,” says Paul Mullen, general manager of point-of-care ultrasound at GE Healthcare. Industry experts believe that hand-held, pocket-sized ultrasound systems will eventually replace stethoscopes in the ED. A few of the systems on the market are GE’s Vscan, Siemens’ ACUSON Freestyle, Philips’ Lumify and SonoSite’s iViz.
When patients show up in the ED with very low blood pressure, the physicians are usually worried about them surviving. When the physician uses the point-of-care ultrasound to image the patient’s heart, it might be determined that the left ventricle is slightly small. The physician would then lift the patient’s leg to allow the blood to flow out of the leg and into the inferior vena cava vein, which should then fill the left ventricle. If it does, the physician will see a nice cardiac response and give fluids to the patient to deal with dehydration.
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“You need to completely change the workflow of the ultrasound machine and show that you can facilitate this quick train of thinking,” says Mullen. “The imaging happens nearly automatically — it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be nearly automatic because no one wants to take the time to push buttons.”
Mullen believes that point-of-care ultrasound will replace other modalities like CT or MR when imaging pediatric patients in the ED. Because of the harmful effects radiation may have on children, hospitals are looking to avoid exposing them to it. Point-of-care ultrasound will also replace other modalities when speed is a major priority. For example, resuscitation is a case where there is no time to perform a CT exam. “I think that where possible we are going to ultrasound, instead of using radiating technology for the care of the most vulnerable patients we have,” says Mullen.
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