U/S

In the spirit of the renal exam, another kidney image. This time in ultrasound. Having actually learned how to do u/s today, I'm quite amazed at this picture, but we were told that it takes around 50 exams to get good at this thing. We were fortunate enough to have had eight volunteers, a few of whom were on abdominal dialysis which allowed us to view abdominal fluid pooling, something that u/s is very good at.

The primary advantage of the u/s is its rapidity. You turn on the machine, put the gel on the transducer, and you've got 60 seconds to do the FAST exam in a trauma setting. FAST is Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (yeah, someone really tried fitting things into this acronym). It's designed for ultrafast assessment of abdominal injuries, but it also extends to the heart. The primary limitation should be obvious from my above comment: it's hard to obtain good, clear images.

A normal ultrasound scan will take longer, but since we're talking emergency medicine, things need to happen quickly, especially when there is some severe trauma like stab or bullet wounds. There is also some discussion in the medical circles as to the possibility of the venerable stethoscope being replaced by ultrasound in the near future.