Preface

Interest in emergency ultrasound continues to skyrocket. Clinicians who practice in the emergency department, the critical care setting, and other acute care settings have become increasingly familiar with how emergency ultrasound can improve and expedite patient care at the bedside. Moreover, its use in enhancing patient safety and reducing errors has been recognized. The application of emergency ultrasound has been incorporated into every emergency medicine residency program. The number of fellowship training programs has increased exponentially. Clinician investigators from nearly all medical specialties and from across the globe have published papers on bedside applications of emergency ultrasound.

This textbook was written by and for health care workers who are engaged in the practice of clinical medicine. We selected topics that represent those problems most commonly encountered in the emergency or acute care setting, thereby generating the greatest interest for the broadest readership. Our aim was to address the needs of clinicians with varied backgrounds and training. Emergency physicians certainly will find this book applicable to their daily practice. Physicians who practice in family medicine, internal medicine, critical care, and general surgery will also find this book to be of value for specific clinical scenarios.

We would like to thank the readers of the first edition of this textbook who offered us excellent feedback that helped us add several new features to this edition. For each chapter, as in the first edition, the clinical considerations and indications of the specific emergency ultrasound examination are discussed. Prior to presenting the technique for the focused emergency ultrasound examination, a new section on “Getting Started” is included to aid novice sonologists who may require additional information on the specific examination. Each chapter continues to emphasize the key aspects of the focused emergency ultrasound examination; this textbook does not attempt to cover every element of the normal comprehensive ultrasound examination. New chapters on prehospital care, ocular applications, and ultrasound-guided procedures are included. Another new feature in this edition is the inclusion of color figures throughout the book. Finally, we feel that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video clip may be worth a hundred thousand. A DVD that demonstrates several common emergency ultrasound examinations is included with each textbook.

Experts from six countries and a variety of medical specialties have contributed to this textbook. We would like to express our deep appreciation to the contributors for their commitment and hard work in helping to produce this textbook. We also would like to thank them for helping us collect the more than 900 figures that are included in this textbook. We would like to thank Lori Green and Gulfcoast Ultrasound for their support of this project and for providing us with numerous ultrasound images from their library. We are indebted to numerous individuals who assisted us with this project; in particular, we would like to thank Anne M. Sydor, Sarah Granlund, Martin Wonsiewicz, and Joe Rusko for their invaluable efforts.