Chair's Letter

Meghan Herbst, MD, FACEP
ACEP EUS Chair
Professor of Emergency Medicine
UConn School of Medicine

Happy New Year! It is going to be a great year for ultrasound! My predictions for 2024 include:

• Unnecessary CT imaging will decrease considerably,
• TEE incorporation into resuscitations across the country will bring patients back to life,
• consultants will ask us “what did the ultrasound show?”
• there will be consensus on the parasternal long axis view for emergency physicians,
• and ultrasound-guided nerve blocks will end the opioid epidemic.

I actually have no evidence to prove any of the above will actually occur…but they could, and it doesn’t hurt to dream big. Best to start the new year with some optimism and reading our January Ultrasound Newsletter. Kudos to Laura Oh and all contributors.

In this issue:

What is ultrasound’s notorious weakness? Operator dependence! Learn from Drs. Milgrim and Riscinti how to get around this with artificial intelligence (AI) developments. Inspired, you may then want to get more involved and leverage AI to benefit you and your practice. Learn how to do this from Dr. Fischetti.

For our educators: nerd out with Pete Gutierrez and discover his innovation for an ultrasound pointer that will engage any audience.

Ever experience technical difficulties with an ultrasound machine and not know who to call or how to report? And for ultrasound directors, ever walk by an ultrasound machine with a sad piece of paper (or napkin) that says “not working” and wonder how long it’s been out of commission? We can hopefully say goodbye to these regular incidents with Dave Suwondo’s use of QR codes to report and solve machine issues.

If you haven’t tried Transcranial Doppler yet (or haven’t had success incorporating it into your practice), Drs. Makowski and Stenberg make it look easy, complete with a practical EM case, images, and infographic.

Our Probing the Literature series, summarized by Drs. Mirsch and Kimball, discussed how ultrasound can assist with thoracostomy in certain patient populations, and whether to volume resuscitate sepsis patients who have low ejection fractions.

Learn from Drs. Kummer, Molinari, and Shiue about sonothrombolysis and its potential future role in treating occlusive myocardial infarction.

Get involved in our subcommittees!! Learn about the 2-click process ultrasound vendors are committing to, and the auto-population advancements for handheld devices, thanks to Drs. Stolz and Ferre from our industry roundtable (IRT) subcommittee. Drs. Liu and Schoeneck put together a summary of their 2024 goals for the Emerging Technology subcommittee and invite you to contribute and help lead them. And join the critical care subcommittee as they put together a TEE toolkit resource for the many EDs that will need this (thank you Drs. Stenberg and Truong for reporting this and other updates!).

If there are ultrasound topics you are passionate about or want to share with our section, please contribute to our newsletter.

Happy reading and Happy New Year!

Meghan