Smacc

When looking into someone’s abdomen, the first thing you'll notice is that it almost looks like there is nothing there. For Dr. Lauren Westafer, the gut looks like a black box. There's a lot of gas which makes it hard to see arteries and organs. In this podcast, Lauren discusses point of care Intestinal Ultrasound. To do an intestinal ultrasound, first, rub the curvilinear probe over the abdomen... That's it as far as technique is concerned! There is nothing  overly complicated for such a useful procedure. Why do we still need an ultrasound for small bowel obstructions when we already have other tools like patient history, a physical exam, and x-ray? Unfortunately, these tools are all unreliable for diagnosing small bowel obstructions. What's more, the training for gut ultrasound doesn't take much time. It takes around 10 minutes to do 5-10 scans. The scanning procedure itself takes less than five minutes to perform. For such a high-value procedure, it takes an incredibly low amount of effort and time!  When