Ultrasound and Covid

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Can using ultrasound at the bedside improve care for COVID-19 patients? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Using ultrasound technology at the bedside of patients with COVID-19 infection is proving very useful in managing the disease. That’s according to Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins.

Garibaldi: One of the advantages of ultrasound in the time of COVID-19 is that you’re going into the room anyway and you can bring in a portable device that’s easily cleanable to start gathering information that previously was only available to us through CT scan, which requires transportation of the patient out of the unit or echocardiography, which requires having another person come into the unit who otherwise wouldn’t be there, with a much larger device which is potentially more difficult to clean. So it’s really been an opportunity to start using ultrasound more broadly, to try to improve our infection control compliance but also to get information in real time.  :34

Garibaldi says ultrasound has been proving so useful that Johns Hopkins has purchased and deployed many of the devices to help clinicians deliver the best care to their patients. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.