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July 29, 2025

Point-of-care ultrasound for suspected testicular torsion: are we nuts?

Traditionally, ultrasound scans are performed in the radiology department. However, ultrasound’s many advantages – such as portability, lack of radiation, repeatability and speed of interpretation – have made it attractive to multiple healthcare settings and specialities. In a modified, focused and less detailed way, ultrasound can be utilised as a rapid bedside diagnostic test, so-called […]

Nick Mani, Julia Burkert-Milone

POCUS UK Group, Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, University College London, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

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July 29, 2025

Poke the paunch with POCUS: gastrointestinal ultrasound in emergency medicine

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) continues to revolutionise the evaluation of abdominal complaints in emergency and acute settings. Its real-time diagnostic potential, portability and noninvasiveness make it a powerful tool in the clinician’s arsenal, particularly when gastrointestinal (GI) pathology is suspected. This article aims to highlight the clinical reasoning, technique and diagnostic markers that underpin effective gastrointestinal […]

Dr Anna Colclough, Dominic Craver

Lewisham Hospital

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January 16, 2025

The magic cauldron: ingredients to transition ultrasound from teaching undergraduate anatomy to postgraduate POCUS

Integrating ultrasound into undergraduate medical curricula in the UK remains a hard nut to crack. While UK medical schools are making progress, there is no standardised undergraduate medical ultrasound curriculum and we are considerably behind the USA and Europe. As a new medical school, we were able to consider the essential ingredients to include in […]

Debs Patten, Kate Duholery, Borsha Sarker

Professor Debs Patten, Dr Kate Dulohery, Borsha Sarker

University of Sunderland Medical Centre

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January 16, 2025

Are hand-held ultrasound devices ready for prime time?

There are growing numbers of specialists practising ultrasound independently of radiology departments, termed point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS). It is becoming increasingly integrated into standard clinical assessment by clinicians in order to improve patient care in different healthcare settings. Ultrasound machines have become more advanced and compact, with many potential clinical applications to accommodate such practice. There […]

Nick Mani

POCUSUK Group; Chesterfield Royal Hospital; University College London

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August 14, 2024

Pre-hospital POCUS by London’s advanced paramedic practitioners in critical care

The London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS) is the single emergency medical service provider for the Greater London regions, serving a population of 8.2 million distributed throughout an area of 1,579km2. Approximately two million 999 calls are received each year and more than 3,000 patients are attended each day. Emergency calls received by the LAS […]

Nick Brown

London Ambulance Service

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August 14, 2024

Development and support of palliative care point-of-care ultrasound

My first introduction to ultrasound in a palliative care setting was at the beginning of 2018 when the then ultrasound business development manager at Siemens Healthineers informed me that she had just installed a new laptop-based system, the Acuson P500, at the local Marie Curie Hospice in Liverpool. The system had been part of a […]

Colin Griffin

Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

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November 15, 2023

Point-of-care ultrasound: what is being imaged and for what purposes?

Across almost all healthcare settings, professions and specialisms, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS; the immediate or concurrent integration of ultrasound imaging into delivery of care or decision making by a treating or triaging clinician) is a rapidly expanding field of ultrasound imaging. POCUS has the potential to increase patient accessibility to imaging-informed care and to create new […]

Dr Mike Smith

Cardiff University

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November 15, 2023

Point-of-care ultrasound and PACS

The use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has been spreading over the past two decades. It is performed outside of the radiology department and may take place in the emergency department (ED), intensive care unit, inpatient ward, operating room, outpatients or in the pre-hospital environment. There has been a growing adoption of POCUS in recent years […]