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Basic POCUS is ultrasonography in every emergency care provider’s pocket
This course teaches you how to use an ultrasound transducer like you use your stethoscope.
The content has been carefully selected to answer the questions on life-threatening and time-critical conditions, focused ultrasonography can answer.
Nothing is left out because of complexity – but everything has been boiled down to the bare essentials of focused ultrasonography in an emergency care setting.
There are no algorithms and no protocol names – the focus is solely on decision-making in individual patients using ultrasonography.
Concept
In this Basic POCUS course, the concept is focused ultrasonography.
Compared to protocolized ultrasonography, it represents a paradigm shift as it applies specific parts of the systematic ultrasonography examinations to solve specific clinical issues.
Only the necessary examinations are performed – and they depend on you and the clinical question you ask regarding your patient.
The focused questions you ask must be of absolute importance to the patient in an emergency setting in terms of:
• Treatment
• Triage
• Transport method/preparation
• Qualifications of the receiving emergency care team
Whether a certain examination is of crucial importance or not depends on the situation, and the decision should always be weighed against the time required to do the examination.
The focused questions selected for this course are:
Heart
Is pericardial fluid collection present?
• Is the left ventricular function reduced?
• Are signs of pulmonary embolism present?
• Are signs of ascending aortic dissection present?
Lung
• Can pneumothorax be confirmed or excluded?
• Are signs of pulmonary edema present or can pulmonary edema be excluded?
• Can pleural fluid be confirmed or excluded?
Abdomen
• Is an abdominal aortic aneurism present?
• Is free intraperitoneal fluid visible?
These focused questions are not static – questions can be added and removed according to evidence and to the development of the ultrasound equipment.
