Ultrasound in Austere Environments with Gaynor Price

World Extreme Medicine Podcast

In this session, we interview Gaynor Price. Gaynor is an emergency physician based in New Zealand and has developed a subspecialty interest in ultrasound in ED. We take a look at point of care ultrasound, its utility and its limitations. We will be especially focussing on the EFAST and how it has been adaptive and progressive in point of care treatment in the past 5 years. We also take a look at ultrasound probes and the positive and negative interaction with tissue. Gaynor unpacks some of the fundamental advantages and disadvantages of POCUS and how it has been adapted, been made portable and democratised amongst clinicians in recent years.

We unpack the principles of EFAST, what we are looking for, when to look and where. We examine the difference image representations of fluid, blood, ascites, urine, intestinal contents, lungs, air. Gaynor them looks at the anatomical variations and how to optimise the view, interplay with clinical questioning, repetition of scans and preferential windows to see the anatomy. We go sequentially through the EFAST and look at tips and tricks from Gaynor's practice and how these can be related to everyone's ultrasound practice and decision making.

We finally look at a prime example of when USS has been really useful to Gaynor's practice in one of the remotest and most extreme environments - Antarctica. She recalls a story of when ultrasound greatly assisted her decision making, illustrating some of the unique examples of this modality in remote and austere locations.