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Ultrasound in the emergency department: Emergency department ultrasound for the assessment of abdominal trauma: an overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2015
Extract
Diagnostic ultrasound (U/S) has been used in medicine for over 40 years, and reports describing the use of abdominal U/S in trauma date back to 1971. Recently, however, trauma ultrasonography has become a controversial issue in Canada.
U/S provides the speed and accuracy we associate with diagnostic peritoneal lavage (DPL) in a noninvasive format. It is safe, inexpensive, repeatable, accessible at the bedside, and requires little patient preparation. U/S is now the initial test for the assessment of blunt abdominal trauma in most European and Australasian centres. More recently U/S has become common in US trauma centres.
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- Controversies • Controverses
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- Copyright © Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians 1999
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