The Importance of Serial POCUS Exams – Dual Pathologies in Play

Rahul Nair; Jonathan Zuo; Ariel L. Shiloh – Serial point of care ultrasound (POCUS) exams are essential to assess acute pericardial effusions which can rapidly evolve into cardiac tamponade. A typical presentation includes dyspnea, tachycardia, and chest pain. Importantly, serial cardiac exams in such high-risk patients can detect other concurrent pathologies. We present an unusual case of a patient who initially presented with an acute circumferential pericardial effusion and upon serial POCUS exams developed an unexpected Takotsubo cardiomyopathy in the setting of cardiac tamponade.

Virtual Supervision of Third Year Medical Students Using Handheld POCUS Devices and Cloud-based Image Archiving Provides Opportunity for Feedback and Skill Improvement

Sydney Murray, BSc; Krista Trinder, MSc; Linden Kolbenson, MD; Jeremy Katulka, MD; Paul Olszynski, MD, MEd – Feedback on Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) skills is essential for skill development. Providing feedback can be difficult in a large province with several distributed medical education sites. Use of handheld POCUS devices and a cloud-based image archiving enables virtual supervision. We evaluated the quality of uploaded images as well as feedback provided to students.

Ultrasound Image Quality Comparison Between a Handheld Ultrasound Transducer and Mid-Range Ultrasound Machine  

Nayema Salimi, MD; Antonio Gonzalez Fiol, MD; N. David Yanez, PhD; Kristen L. Fardelmann, MD; Emily Harmon, MD; Katherine Kohari, MD; Sonya Abdel Razeq, MD; Urania Magriples, MD; Aymen Alian, MD – Not all labor and delivery floors are equipped with ultrasound machines which can serve the needs of both obstetricians and anesthesiologists. This cross-sectional, blinded, randomized observational study compares the image resolution (RES), detail (DET), and quality (IQ) acquired by a handheld ultrasound, the Butterfly iQ, and a mid-range mobile device, the Sonosite M-turbo US (SU), to evaluate their use as a shared resource.