Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
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| This post was peer reviewed. Click to learn more. |
Recently, I heard a quote that has summarized a large part of the emergency medicine practice I have experienced thus far. My attending said, “In a few years, ultrasound will be the new stethoscope.” What he was referring to is not only how popular ultrasound is becoming, but the necessity for physicians to be able to use ultrasound correctly. Ultrasound can help keep certain patients right where we want them, not in a CT scanner, but in our emergency room where we can adequately diagnose and treat them. Ask any physician in the hospital, the last place they want an unstable (or potentially unstable) patient is in the radiology suite. From the Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma (FAST) exam to a simple post void residual, ultrasound is a fantastic tool. In this article I will present a relatively newer type of ultrasound technique as an example showing how important this tool can be.
