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Ultrasound in the emergency department: Emergency department ultrasound for the assessment of abdominal trauma: an overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2015

John Ross
John Ross*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Health Sciences Centre, Halifax, NS
*
johnross@is.dal.ca

Extract

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Diagnostic ultrasound (U/S) has been used in medicine for over 40 years, and reports describing the use of abdominal U/S in trauma date back to 1971. Recently, however, trauma ultrasonography has become a controversial issue in Canada.

U/S provides the speed and accuracy we associate with diagnostic peritoneal lavage (DPL) in a noninvasive format. It is safe, inexpensive, repeatable, accessible at the bedside, and requires little patient preparation. U/S is now the initial test for the assessment of blunt abdominal trauma in most European and Australasian centres. More recently U/S has become common in US trauma centres.

Type
Controversies • Controverses
Information
Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1999 , pp. 117 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians 1999

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