Michael Prats

Can implementing a POCUS protocol helps improve the work flow in the emergency department?

Pain from kidney stones is a common reason to come to the emergency department. Ultrasound has been shown to be a good first step in assessment – to determine the presence and degree of hydronephrosis.

Can you do POCUS to detect acute chest syndrome?

This article takes a look at using ultrasound to assess for successful reduction of adult patients with distal radius fractures.

The authors of this paper seek to increase the use of cardiac POCUS by collaborating with cardiologists to create a focused cardiac ultrasound protocol.

Did you know that a single 5 cc saline push can likely confirm correct line placement?

Ultrasound of the IVC is the people’s volume responsiveness test. The idea is that you can non-invasively tell if a patient will benefit from getting more IV fluids. Everybody wants this to work so we can have a simple test to help us in critical situations. It is more reliable in mechanically ventilated patients with a fixed tidal volume but how about the non-intubated patient? Can we trust it?

A Wild “Goose” Chase?

Does routine use of US during morning rounds on all patients improve patient outcomes?

If you haven’t heard of speckle tracking on echocardiography – it is a pretty cool idea. So maybe this Speckle Tracking echocardiography (STE) would be of use as a point-of-care study to help identify patients that need more emergent revascularization when acute coronary syndrome is suspected.