Ultrasound isn't just for babies anymore.
"We use it for everything from head to toe and skin and organs," emergency medicine instructor Laleh Gharahbaghian, MD, recently told writer Sara Wykes for an Inside Stanford Medicine story. "It's become an essential tool at the bedside we apply to immediately rule out -- or rule in -- medical conditions."
That's why Gharahbaghian and her colleagues are hosting ULTRAfest, a full day of ultrasound instruction open to all medical students on Oct. 18. Last year, more than 300 students from across the western United States attended.
Ultrasound uses sound waves that are too high pitched for our ears to detect. The waves bounce off material in the body, providing a glimpse inside.
What's so great about 'Sound (as Gharahbaghian calls it on her Twitter page)? It's relatively cheap -- new scanners start at $90,000 -- non-invasive and portable. Ultrasound has also moved beyond mere diagnostics. For example, Stanford radiologist Pejman Ghanouni, MD, PhD, uses ultrasound to treat uterine fibroids.
Although the technology isn't new, researchers are finding new uses for ultrasound. As detailed in that Inside Stanford Medicine piece:
More recently, the use of ultrasound has crossed into another part of the anatomy long thought to be immune to its imaging prowess: the lungs. In the air-filled environment of the lungs, the sound waves that are the basis of ultrasound have nothing to ping against. However, in lungs where disease has produced fluids, ultrasound has proven more accurate than a chest X-ray and faster than CT scan to diagnose common lung conditions, including pulmonary edema, pneumonia and pleural effusions.
Other doctors and medical students, including U-fest volunteer William White aren't shy about touting ultrasound's benefits: "I just fell in love with the technology, picking up a probe and looking into the body in real time."
Previously: New technology enabling men to make more confident decisions about prostate cancer treatment, Listening to the stethoscope's vitals, Plane crash creates unexpected learning environment for medical students
Photos by Teresa Roman-Micek
