Basic Abdominal Ultrasound in Dogs and Cats. Can your Technician Perform the Scan?

Introduction
The use of ultrasound during the evaluation of the patient with signs referable to the abdominal cavity provides valuable information obtained in a noninvasive fashion with no confirmed adverse biologic effects. Additionally, minimal or no sedation is generally required to complete an abdominal scan in the nonpainful patient. Abdominal ultrasound provides useful data in a short period of time.

Today, many veterinary practices are extremely busy, as many families have multiple pets. The large caseloads result in veterinary technicians performing skilled tasks such as anesthesia, dentistry and radiography. I believe technicians can be trained to perform ultrasound scans and document both normal and abnormal findings in the abdomen for veterinary interpretation. By learning the basic abdominal scanning procedures, technicians could become the primary ultrasonographers in many veterinary clinics in the future, just as occurs today with radiography. Performing the scan, documenting findings and reporting back to the doctor, as is currently the practice in human medicine, will become the norm in veterinary medicine as well. Today’s lecture outlines the technique to train technicians to perform an abdominal ultrasound.

Equipment
Small animal patients are best evaluated using an ultrasound machine equipped with a curvilinear variable frequency scanhead (6.0-8.0 MHz). Many portable machines now have available a high-frequency linear scanhead (8.0 -10.0 MHz) which will improve quality and also allow evaluation of smaller regional anatomy (thyroid, parathyroid, cryptorchid testes).

Preparation
The small animal patient should be placed in dorsal recumbency within a padded V-trough, and gently restrained by an assistant(s) holding the forelimbs and hindlimbs. (Figure 1) Sedation is rarely required for the basic abdominal scan unless marked pain or apprehension is present. Allowing the patient to become accustomed to this restraint before initiating clipping or scanning usually minimizes struggling and resultant aerophagia.  [...]