Yes Greg Dilasciandro has

Yes Greg Dilasciandro has pioneered this in vet medicine and is a good start to sonography but I see 2 issues with this in FAST reality. 1) The pet owner thinks ultrasound and often doesnt absorb the difference between FAST scan and full scan. 2) With SDEP program (disclaimer SonoPath taught and developed technique for ultrasound procedures) you can just learn to scan fast and get all the views in nearly the same time you do a FAST scan so why not do the whole thing and send out for interpretation? FAST is useful don’t get me wrong but ECC vets could learn to do a full scan in chest and abdomen and have tons more information in a short amount of time. The maneuvers honestly are not tough with the right system like SDEP, especially wiht a touch of opioid on board, which is why we developed the program for abdomen and chest. The interpretation is the bigger deal if the vet focuses just on image acquisition and remotes it out then its the best of both worlds wiht a 10 min or less full abdomen or chest with practice. It depends on the end focus of purpose and effort by th evet learning but I have seen many many vets and techs go from 0 to 17 full abdomen very quickly in the same time of a FAST lab. Disclaimer we invented the SDEP at SonoPath but we did so for this exact reason… acquire as much image set info in short amount of time for diagnostic efficiency for the patient. I love teaching FAST scanners to just scan fast SDEP style. So yes FAST is useful but a good step one that at least gets people picking up a probe but interpretation ability is minimal regarding any specifics and the onwers often are not distinguishing the difference between a full scan and a FAST scan…. i.e. I see a case in the field the day after someone did a FAST scan and I find an invasive adrenal tumor or LSA metting to the chest causing non cardiogenic pleural effusion found on a FAST scan… owner says “Why didn’t they find the tumor on the scan done last night?”not realizing she paid for a FAST scan and not a full sonogram with experienced interpretation.

This happens repeatedly….. So imagine if the first probe had been a 17 point SDEP abdomen and chest adequately read in house or telemed interpretation and the owner had and paid for the info up front. Its a political thing but a reality to be dealt with that repeats itself as a mobile sonographer in my circles.