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The pocket-sized ultrasound devices that made debut during the 2010 Olympics for use on injured athletes are now being put into action on trauma patients at Vancouver General Hospital. The non-invasive, quick diagnosis tool, which won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada just before the Olympics, weighs less than a pound and is the size of a mobile phone.

It has a probe that, when held against the body, gives doctors a fast look inside to determine if organs like the spleen, kidneys or liver are damaged and if there’s evidence of internal bleeding.

Three Vscan ultrasound units were donated as an Olympics legacy to Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals by the maker, GE Healthcare, but the most active user so far is Dr. Ross Brown, a Vancouver General trauma surgeon who was manager of the Whistler polyclinic during the Games.

“Free blood floating is a bad thing,” said Brown, who carries the unit in his lab coat pocket while he’s working. “It gives us a quick ‘yes’ if it is present or a quick ‘no.’ That’s something we can now get an answer to within seconds.”

If fluid is present, then further diagnostics, like another ultrasound on a bigger machine or a CT scan, might be ordered — or the patient might go straight to the operating room.

Brown isn’t a radiologist but he’s been trained on the point-of-care technology, as it is called, which is also attracting interest from all kinds of medical specialists such as cardiologists, obstetrician/gynecologists, general surgeons and even family doctors. It’s getting rave reviews as a teaching tool for medical students, because young adults are so enamoured of technology.

“It’s simple, convenient, and it helps establish a rapport with patients, who love it,” Brown said.

Dr. Savvas Nicolaou, director of emergency and trauma radiology at Vancouver General, said that two years ago a competing company, Siemens, donated two hand-held ultrasound machines that have been in use since then. The new GE equipment is similar but more advanced: the probes, image resolution and depth have improved, he said.

The new devices also allow doctors to analyze blood flow inside vessels, something they couldn’t do before.

“As an extension of the physical examination, it is a great tool,” Nicolaou said. “We’re all sold on technology around here and I would agree that medical students are really into it, plus it’s easy to take into a classroom.”

Nicolaou added he would love to see the tool put in the hands of paramedics, who could scan patients in transport and then alert hospital doctors to the results via wireless.

Dr. Bruce Forster, head of radiology at the University of B.C. and medical director of imaging at Vancouver General, said the technology is useful because it allows imaging to be brought to the patient, rather than the other way around.

“The Vscan has applications for basic abdominal ultrasound, in trauma cases,” he said, adding it also helps with some cardiac ultrasounds, “again especially for detection of fluid around the heart and possibly for ventricular chamber filling, and for detection of fetal heart activity in obstetric ultrasound,” Forster said.

“The real advantage is in timely scanning of patients in critical care scenarios, when they serve to augment the physical examination by the physician, which can be compromised by the patient’s physical condition. They do not substitute for the more commonly performed formal ultrasound examination by highly sophisticated ultrasound units, which permit more detailed assessment of the heart, breast, abdominal and pelvic organs, vascular tree, the fetus, and musculoskeletal structures such as tendons and ligaments, performed by ultrasound technologists and radiologists.”

John Wheeler, a spokesman for GE, said in an interview that ambulances in Europe are already stocked with the devices. When Vancouver General hospital got the first generation of such devices from Siemens, they were valued at $12,000 each but prices for such technology are dropping — the GE Vscans are $7,900.

Source: The Vancouver Sun

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