Echocardiography Sonographer

We are going to review some of the methods for beginning sonographers to really be able to help master the basics of echocardiography. The first place I’d like to start is what I call a circle survey and what some people call window shopping, we basically are looking to find a window, in this case, we can see there is a window here but what you can’t see is every once in a while. As I am doing this circle, the image gets really bright, one of the hardest parts for a sonographer that’s very new to realize is how to get the best window and then also how to get back to it because if you get very timid to move away from a window that you find because you are afraid that you might not be able to get that window back again, so this is a reasonable window here but if I do a circle survey.

All of a sudden, I stumble into something and the reason we use a circle is because with a circle, you know exactly how to go back, if you are going up and down, side to side, you may not remember exactly which combination you used to land in a window but if you use a circle then you can see that if you pass something, you can get right up your circle and find it again so again I will circle around, that’s bright, if I back up. there it is, I will go past it, I can back up, there it is, so even if we are circling the other way, there is a good window, I go past, that’s not good, I can go back counterclockwise or however you are moving and then you can find your best window again so the circle survey really helps stumble in to the best possible window and feel confident that you can go back and find what you passed so you are not tethered down to one window that may not be the best window for a particular patient in this case. A little bit of work leaving my comfort zone of something that I had, I can stumble into a nice window and I can back right into it.

I will do the same for the inside view, first thing I am going to start doing is circling around then you can see we are getting close. I am going to make the circle smaller in the area where I am closing in on it and if I pass, I can just back up on the circle and then I can fall back into my view so again, by circling around, see how the big the movements are. There it goes with my hand and you can see what’s changing on the screen as well, just back up a little bit after I pass something that’s bright and then go into the nicer view. I can make my more minute manipulations to get an fine tune an image but it’s very easy to end up in a place where you are working and it’s not a good window. If you just take a little circle survey or go window shopping, you may stumble into a better view but if you are moving in that predictable manner, it’s very easy to get back to where you were if you are always moving in that circle so that’s the circle survey, let’s go window shopping and have better images everyday.