Focused ultrasound technique for abdominal emergency situations in small animals

There is a growing demand for sonography in emergency medicine and veterinarians have widely achieved to this important objective in emergency part and have used it, because of the diagnostic advantage, major advances have been achieved in veterinary sonography technology. Although computed tomography is a selective imaging method for diagnosing post-traumatic bleeding, detecting abdominal injury is difficult and can potentially be fatal such as uncontrollable bleeding. In veterinary, computed tomography (CT) has become a selective imaging method for abdominal injuries. However, access to CT in veterinary medicine is relatively limited. In addition, CT requires the patient to be hemodynamically stable, and needs sedative, general anesthesia or the use of special devices to limit patient that are expensive and non-portable. There are two main types of emergency ultrasound: Full emergency ultrasound and focused emergency ultrasound, which is often called FAST (focused assessment with sonography for trauma). Focused emergency ultrasound technique is a focused examination to achieve quickly important clinical information about emergency patient such as an external object, large masses, gallstones or liquids. Clinical experts (clinicians) can be trained relatively quick, and low-cost and portable ultrasound devices is needed for this purpose. This article reviewed the use of ultrasound by surgeon in abdominal emergency situations.