Ultrasound: Fill & Download for Free

Aug 27:Oh I know this. I get this question a lot from my patients of all ages.For the young minds that cannot still comprehend the complexities of physics much less even ever heard about the word physics, I have an easy answer. I tell them that it's easier to move my ultrasound probe/camera around their little tummies and peek inside so that I can get the pictures I need for the doctor.For the bright individuals who have a mature understanding of the subject regarding sound waves or those who have lived past their prime and already have the wisdom of living a full life, I choose the more complicated answer to the question.When we learn physics in high school, we learn about energy transfer and about waves of different frequencies from sound, to radio, to UV. We also learn that these waves need a medium to travel through. Some waves have to vibrate the air molecules to pass the energy along.The ultrasound waves are at a really high frequency and low energy, so that it cannot be seen and does not carry enough energy to form heat, hence it is also safe for pregnancies as it cannot heat the tissue around it. However, when the ultrasound probe is switched on but sits on the console, it produces no image on the screen.Why?This is because, the sound waves of the ultrasonic frequency cannot pass through air. It needs a solid or liquid medium to travel through. What better material then, then to use the blue coloured, or sometime clear, ultrasound jelly?But why, you may ask, cannot we just touch the camera/probe to the skin without the use of gel and the skin could be the medium to transfer the sound waves through?Well you see, there is a thin layer of air that rests between the skin and the probe, and it can get worse with the presence of body hair (chest hair, beard, etc.).The ultrasound gel actually displaces the air from between the skin line and the ultrasound probe.Voilà!We have contact!<Insert​ GIF of being mind blown> (I have yet to figure out how to insert them and hopefully will do in the future).Edit Sept 9:Wowza!!!! OMG!! 2.7k upvotes??? I really wasn't expecting that. Thank you guys for liking my answer. I am glad that it's one that helps you understand what ultrasound and the use of the gel is about.Also, Thank you very much for catching the spelling mistake and suggesting the edit Danny Zhu and Ravneet Gill.Edit Sept 30:OMG!!! 6.7k upvotes. Never in my life did I think my answer would get liked so much. Thank you so much everyone! You guys made my day.

I have been an ultrasound tech for almost 30 years. There could be several reasons why they did not have the screen positioned so you could see.Some techs do not want to continually answer the patient’s question of “What is that?” The tech needs to be focused on what they are looking at so as not to miss any pathology. If the tech misses pathology then the doctor reading it does not see it. Ultrasound is very user-dependent and if the tech does not image pathology because they are distracted, then the patient will go untreated for said pathology.Sometimes it is ergonomics. Performing ultrasound creates a lot of repetitive stress injuries in the shoulder, neck, wrist, and back. It may seem easy to just rub a transducer on someone's belly but, in reality, it is not. For some, turning the screen even slightly exacerbates already sore and tired joints.Patients can sometimes pick up when we are taking images of something that is not right. The average person may not understand everything they are looking at, however, if we are measuring a large mass on an organ it can be quite obvious. Technologists are not to reveal pathology to patients, and if the patient asks what we are measuring, we do not want to lie and say it is nothing or reveal what it really is. That is the doctor’s responsibility. And, despite doing this for many years I can sometimes be wrong about something that may or may not be true pathology. That is why we work closely with the radiologist to discuss scans and come to a collaborated consensus. That is one reason I like this field, because I am constantly learning.If it happens again you can always ask why you can't see the screen. I bet most will say because they need to concentrate on what they are doing which is a good thing. You want your ultrasound tech to do the best job possible.

‘My friend's life’He generally never says no to anything, and so he always ended up paying for all our colleagues' coffee bill, whenever we ordered. But he always did it smilingly. He is the quietest radiologist I know of, and one of the most capable.It was late in the evening, and he did not have lunch yet. Not the right time for the General Electric (GE) salesman to request him to ‘do demo a new portable ultrasound system’.‘Sir just 5 minutes, the company insisted on your comment sir, please’.As usual, he couldn’t say no.With the last patient gone, he looked for some hospital orderly to lie down on the patient bed to check the new ‘portable ultrasound’ machine.Hungry, and looking for a way to solve his predicament, he succumbed to the most primordial reflex. He lifted the right end of his neatly tucked shirt and placed the ‘ultrasound probe’ on to his own abdomen to check for the clarity of the machine.-What shocked him was not the clarity of the ultrasound machine but the fact that his right kidney showed a clear ‘mass’ at the lower pole; a diagnosis of ‘Renal Cell carcinoma – RCC’ That was the diagnosis that he would make on seeing such an image for any patient, including himself, with a radiology MD name board on his white coat.‘Good machine’ he softly commented and left.Instead of going for lunch, he went to his colleague in a nearby hospital. By evening urology consultation was taken and the next day he was inside the operating room in a green dress, undergoing partial nephrectomy.We waited outside. No one ordered coffee.The biopsy confirmed cancer, but fortunately, he was cured.Because it was detected very early.-Now I know why his room has the picture of an ultrasound machine hung on the wall; instead of the usual lord ‘Ganesha’.The mouse might be good at smelling money, but the ultrasound is better in picking up unseen diseases early and save a catastrophe, something that no money can buy.