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Rogue waves

Yes, yes you do have time to do POCUS!

May 27, 2014 1 Comment
Yes, yes you do have time to do POCUS!

  I was recently at the North York Emergency Medicine Update in Toronto, Ontario.  An excellent emergency medicine conference, often the largest annual meeting of its type in Canada.  During an amazing talk one of the plenary speakers, who loves ultrasound a lot, made a comment about rarely using it for nerve blocks.  Why?  Because […]

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I can’t feel a pulse! Why not look for it instead?

May 23, 2014 0 Comments
I can’t feel a pulse!  Why not look for it instead?

I love to watch colleagues carefully palpate for pulses and try to listen for bruits, use doptones, etc. all the while desperately hoping they are not dealing with a completely ischemic limb. Then I grab my ultrasound machine and throw some colour doppler on the subject and get a much better picture of what’s going […]

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Time-saving technique for difficult lumbar punctures

April 5, 2014 2 Comments
Time-saving technique for difficult lumbar punctures

Lumbar puncture failure, although not a catastrophic event, is always frustrating and time consuming. Skin marking after identifying spinous processes with ultrasound is an interesting method to increase your success rate. However, real time ultrasound guided lumbar puncture is relatively easy to do and faster than skin marking. I personally use the abdominal probe with […]

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Scrotal U/S-infection

March 31, 2014 0 Comments
Scrotal U/S-infection

Another pearl from Dr. Gordon regarding scanning the testes: When one testicle shows no flow or much reduced flow on the painful side, torsion is likely. In this patient the presentation was not as acute as expected of torsion. Scrotal U/S showed increased flow on the painful side and the painful testicle was also larger […]

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Widened symphysis on POCUS

March 30, 2014 0 Comments
Widened symphysis on POCUS

A few of us (@thomas1973, @mikegreenway, @broomedocs) were discussing on Twitter the use of POCUS/EDE to look for a widened symphysis pubis in the setting of major trauma. We were wondering if there is any literature to back that up. I found one article in the EDE database. Bauman et al published their article titled […]

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Bootcamp EDE: Drop and give me 200

March 16, 2014 6 Comments
Bootcamp EDE: Drop and give me 200

The biggest obstacle to beginners embracing POCUS is the initial effort required to master basic skills. Most learners complete an introductory course that takes a day or two. This is followed by supervised scanning sessions and examinations to meet the required numbers and proficiency to be “certified” to apply the skill independently. This can require […]

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3rd Annual EDE 3 Course Announcement!

March 8, 2014 2 Comments
3rd Annual EDE 3 Course Announcement!

I am happy to announce the third annual EDE 3 course! There has been a lot of demand for a Canadian location for the course so it’s going to be a ski vacation this time around. It will be held at the Delta Sun Peaks resort in Sun Peaks British Columbia Feb 2-3 2015. Sun […]

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#POCUS for Trauma in pregnancy

February 26, 2014 0 Comments
#POCUS for Trauma in pregnancy

Anton Helman (@EMCases) put up a question on Twitter regarding pregnant trauma patients and whether or not one can see a tiny amount of free fluid later in pregnancy that is physiologic. Or should one assume that it is blood. The answer is the latter. There is actually a Best BETS on using FAST in […]

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How clean is your probe?

February 25, 2014 0 Comments
How clean is your probe?

Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine: Hospital-Wide Survey of Bacterial Contamination of Point-of-Care Ultrasound Probes and Coupling Gel I find the results of this article surprising but welcome.  If your shop is anything like mine, it isn’t unheard of to see a probe covered in partly dried gel or even some blood in the resuscitation room.  There […]

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POCUS in Renal Failure

February 24, 2014 1 Comment
POCUS in Renal Failure

Ray and I have been teaching bedside ultrasound to the medical students at NOSM for the last couple of years. I taught them Renal/Bladder EDE last month. Kudos to Andrew Skinner from St. Paul’s in Vancouver for creating the powerpoint. I added measurement of the kidney in the long axis to the Renal part of […]

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