V-Scan Demonstration 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.
Transcript of Introducing the VScan Video
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.
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