Diagnostic Medical Sonography Essay

1532 Words4 Pages

Diagnostic Medical Sonography
Diagnostic Medical Sonography, also known as ultrasound, has opened up many opportunities to patients all over the world with the ability to capture live images from inside their body. This allows doctors to see problems with organs, tissues and vessels without anything but a simple transducer. Sonography has been an important advancement in technology with many scientists contributing to the development. It has also played a huge role in preventive care for the population for things such as pregnancies, cardiovascular disease and cancers. It is very popular in the United States due to the availability of the knowledgeable sonographers as well as the U.S being able to afford the expensive equipment. Developing …show more content…

Sonography is a very complex field of medicine and requires a lot of scientific knowledge on how each instrument is used to create an image. A instrument called a transducer is used for each procedure. The transducer sends out high frequency, inaudible sound waves then listens for the sounds of the echoes bouncing off the tissue or organs being examined. Special crystallized sound gel is placed on the skin for the transducer to slide upon to create the best electrical field for the waves to produce an image. These ultrasound procedures are commonly used to diagnose many conditions or diseases. Some major organs usually looked at with ultrasound are heart, gallbladder, brain and uterus (“Ultrasound (Sonography).”). There are three areas in which sonographers can specialize in that are general, echocardiography, and vascular ultrasound. General ultrasound is the study of the abdomen, male and female pelvis, obstetrics and superficials structures such as the breast. Echocardiography is the ultrasound specialty of infants, children and adult heart anatomy. Vascular sonographers then specializes in the anatomy of veins. All three of them require a certification, associates or bachelors degree in to be able to be registered by the …show more content…

In low income countries it is very difficult for the health care facilities to obtain the equipment they need to perform ultrasound exams. Hospitals and clinics themselves are very scarce and low on resources. Most hospitals in these developing countries do not even have soap or water for their staff or patients to wash their hands. More than 40% of the hospitals consist of some sanitary water or none at all. This means the babies being born are put around very high unhygienic conditions and most of the time die shortly after because of illness from these conditions (Reuters). Research has been done over 26 hospitals in the eight developing countries among the Middle East and Africa concluding that their is more than one death per day in these facilities. The deaths are caused more from the reason of lack of knowledge of the health care workers and lack of supervision. (Annals of the New York…) The conditions of these visiting patients are also very serious due to the lack of knowledge to treat simple diseases and to take part in preventive care. (“Health Screening Services”) People in these developing worlds also will have to travel extremely far to reach these health facilities and many do not have the money to do so. This is because there is less doctors and nurses per 1,000 of the population that need to be taken care of. In these WHO countries Europe has the most

Open Document