Exciting new health assessment technology enables you to know, not just hope, you are healthy inside and out.
A portable handheld ultrasound scanner, the V-Scan allows us to screen your internal organ systems so we can check for warning signs of cancer, heart attack and stroke before symptoms appear in a blood test or during a medical examination.
We are proud to be the first in Australia to offer you the V-Scan. You can watch the video of Dr Cummins demonstrating how the V-Scan works or you can read the transcript of the video below.
Identify warning signs before symptoms and disease develop
When your appointment includes a V-Scan it enables us to:
- examine your heart’s structure and function to ensure your heart muscle, lining and valves are functioning correctly
- check if there is evidence of valve leakage or blood pressure damage to the heart, providing additional information over and above an examination and ECG testing
- examine internal organs within the abdominal cavity, such as the liver, kidneys, spleen, aorta and pelvic area to identify any abnormalities
This gives additional reassurance beyond blood test and medical examination that there are no growths or masses at an early stage, nor dilatation of your major vessels. For example, kidney cancer is often found while performing an ultrasound for other reasons.
Any abnormalities identified during the scan will obviously require appropriate follow up, including a formal diagnostic scan.
V-Scan is an optional extra that you can ask for at any time. You can count on us to suggest it if we feel it would be beneficial.
Transcript of the video
Hi. I’m John Cummins. The purpose of this video is to demonstrate to you the ultrasound technology that we use here at Executive Medicine. I first found out about this reading in cardiology journals about the power of this little handheld device.
What intrigued me as a physician was that there are so many papers published saying that ultrasound technology using this particular device was incredibly accurate. Of course, I became excited.
For the first time with our patients, we don’t just assume their organs are healthy. We can actually look into the organs themselves.
Traditionally with hearts, we do ECGs and stress tests. We listen to the heart. I think they’re all very valid ways of obtaining information, but now we can actually look at the heart structure and function.
It’s the same with abdominal organs. We feel the liver. We feel for the kidneys when we do an examination. We will continue to do those. We check with blood tests and urine tests.
Now we all know that we can have problems with those organs that don’t show up through those parameters. We can now look at livers, kidneys, aortas, pancreases, spleens, bladders, et cetera. Using this tool, we can look now inside the body; looking for evidence of heart failure, heart thickening, valvular problems, and previous heart attack.
Particularly my interest in looking at the abdominal organs is:
- Can we find a cancer before it shows up in the blood tests?
- Can we see if the aorta is dilating the main blood vessel from the heart, which can increase the risk of rupture down the track? You often can’t just tell by feeling it.
I want to demonstrate to you now how quick and easy this technology is. We’re going to do the heart first and then the abdominal organs. This will be a limited view for you to see just how easy it is to do this technology.
I’ve already put some gel on the patient here. All we do now with the ultrasound probe is examine the heart.
Initially, I’ve got a really good look now at the heart structure itself. You can see the valve there, beating very nicely.
If I rotate the probe, I get a look down the left ventricle so I can see the left ventricle beating very nicely.
Then, with the probe itself as well, if I go around to the other side of the heart, I’m looking now at the four chambers of the heart, looking at the heart muscle, looking at heart structure, looking at the heart function.
Adrian, here, has obviously got a very healthy heart, important for a young man like this. It’s important to know that he wasn’t born with any thickening of the heart that can lead to sudden cardiac death. It’s very, very uncommon. I appreciate that. With this tool, I can now see the heart beating away. I can see all the valves. I can see the heart muscle. I can see the lining of the heart. It all looks basically fantastic.
Then we change modes. We now go to the abdominal mode. Again, I’ve put some goo on the patient beforehand. Now I’m looking at the liver. I’m looking all around the liver. I can see the portal vein there. I’m looking at the liver architecture. I’m just seeing if there’s any fat in the liver that might give abnormal liver function tests.
I just want to make sure that the liver itself is not showing any evidence of any cancer, tumors, or masses. Patient’s liver is really healthy. I can get to see all of the lobes. I can see the gallbladder there with no stones in it. I’m looking at two sections, longitudinally and horizontally, because we don’t really want to miss anything. As expected, it’s a very healthy, normal-looking liver.
Next, we move on to the kidney. The kidney lies under the liver. You can see here. There’s the kidney. It’s a beautiful shape there. It’s a typical finding of a normal, healthy kidney. We look up along the axis of the kidney. We look down the axis of the kidney. We turn the probe up sideways and again, scan through the kidney looking for any evidence of cysts or tumors.
Was he born with a congenital loss of a kidney or congenital extra kidney? We go around to the other side. Don’t forget this is a limited examination. A real examination takes longer. This is more just a demonstration. We look at the other kidney now. Look at long axis. Look at the short axis. Now moving up to the spleen above the kidney just to make sure that there’s nothing infiltrating the spleen. No lymphoma. No other cancers. Spleen looks normal. That’s great.
Then we would move to the stomach. Now I’m looking at the aorta to make sure it’s not dilated, to make sure there’s no aneurysm there. I can see all the aorta. I can see the arteries. Just above the aorta, I’m particularly interested in looking at the pancreas to make sure the pancreas has no masses or any abnormalities. Certainly, no pancreatic cancer. Down from the aorta, given more time, we would then look at the bladder and the prostate. In women, just have a look at the ovaries.
In summary, it was just a demonstration to show how this thing is done and what the capabilities are. We can look at blood flow through valves. It’s fantastic technology that really enhances a physical examination and, I think, gives added reassurance that all the organs are perfectly healthy in an anatomical state with no essential disease processes that we may otherwise miss. It’s a very, very reassuring examination to have.
I’ve shown this to a number of colleagues who are cardiologists and ultrasonographers. They’ve all been very impressed with the power of this technology. We find with medicine that we’re using more and more technology. Things are getting smaller and smaller as our computing power increases.
If you’re at all interested in having the ultrasound of the heart or of the abdominal organs, the pelvis, or both, please just discuss it with the staff. I hope this video has helped you.
Thank you.
~ End of Transcript ~
The future of medicine
At Executive Medicine we want you to age with vitality and are committed to offering health assessments using technology to help us do that.
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