Ultrasound Technology Provides Greater Insights for Pediatrics

With intuitive controls and a wide range of transducers, a new point-of-care ultrasound system offers anesthetists easy access to ultrasound guidance for line placement and regional nerve blocks.

The pediatric anesthetics department at Leeds General Infirmary (UK) has taken advantage of this user-friendly instrument to ensure accurate and safe regional anesthesia, as well as post-surgery multimodal analgesia. Consultant pediatric anesthetist Dr. Duncan Johnson explained, "Ultrasound guidance is of particular benefit to pediatric specialties, as the anatomy of a premature infant has little in common with that of a 17-year-old. Use of ultrasound to guide nerve blocks offers an easy route to safer, more reliable blocks, enabling the anesthetist to visualize the needle adjacent to the nerve, while avoiding other important structures.”

"Leeds is a national referral centre for hand surgery, specializing in transplants and improving motor function for children with congenital abnormalities. These procedures are generally performed in very young children, and effective nerve blocks can be difficult to achieve, due to a combination of their small size and atypical anatomy. Ultrasound guidance is very helpful in these patients, and the small footprint of the S-Nerve's hockey stick probe is very well suited to this application. The anesthesia-focused controls of the instrument make it very quick and easy to operate during procedures, obtaining good quality images with a minimum of adjustments.”

The S-Nerve ultrasound system was developed by SonoSite, Inc. (Bothell, WA, USA).

SonoSite is a developer of hand-carried ultrasound. The company's small, lightweight systems are expanding the use of ultrasound across the clinical spectrum by cost-effectively bringing high performance ultrasound to the point of patient care.

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SonsoSite
Leeds General Infirmary