I worked as a echocardiographic technician in a human hospital and I used a Ped off (blind CW) probe a lot. Do I need one in veterinary medicine? Anne
I worked as a echocardiographic technician in a human hospital and I used a Ped off (blind CW) probe a lot. Do I need one in veterinary medicine? Anne
Comments
Not sure what you mean
Not sure what you mean here… the specturm of probes for vet med should cover from 3-10 mHz and phased array able to do CF, PW and CW up to 7 m/sec. Most machines will have 2 cardiac frobes i.e. the logic e will have the 6s and 3s to cover all cardio small/big dogs and you can use the 8c for general scanning up to about #50 for echo but it does not do CW.
I’ve always wanted ot play around wiht a bunch of human setups and see what cool imaging I could do in vet med because the human variability is much higher than what is fed uus in vet med lines of US sales…. maybe a 100k shopping spree on ebay for a few machiens with various probes :)… not quite practical but getting some hand-me-downs form a human hospital that switches out their equipment every 3 years would be a cool Sanford and Son project for veterinary scanning lol
A ped off or blind cw probe
A ped off or blind cw probe is a small probe on the end of a + shaped handle http://www.davismedical.com/Products/Acuson-Ped-Off-Probe-20-MHz__SAR-ULT-AUXCW.aspx
You can find one by pasting in the url. It is blind, so you use CW to locate your flow of interest (jet produced by interventricular walls touching during systole in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, MR jet, TR jet or any really high velocity jet). Then use the Ped off for a more accurate assessment of the velocity of the flow. It is used mostly to assess the velocity of TR in order to use the bernolli equation to estimate the pulmonary artery pressure and hence determine whether pulmonary hypertension is present. If the TR is very mild and it is difficult to get a good CW envelope, you stand a better chance with a blind CW. Clinicians are very interested in obtaining an estimate of pulmonary hypertension without have to go to the lab to do a cardiac catherization. It is pretty reliable method.
Sounds like this isn’t done or isn’t considered necessary in vet medicine. But, as veterinarians we are still thinking about asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, or even pulmonary hypertension secondary to left heart failure or hypertrophy.