ASO Editorial: Ultrasound as an Extension of our Clinical Examination

Excerpt

There are many who believe that ultrasound will evolve in the future to be for clinicians what the stethoscope has been in the past. Indeed, improvements in technology and resolution have rapidly expanded the use of ultrasound, allowing it to leave the halls of radiology suites and move into the clinics, emergency rooms, and operating rooms, as well as to the patient’s bedside. As ultrasound has expanded, non-radiologist clinicians, and especially surgeons, have learned to embrace the technology to explore a wide variety of clinical scenarios, ranging from vascular examinations, arterial and central line placement, focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) examinations, surveilling nodal basins, and focused evaluations of organs such as the breast and thyroid. …