It is Saturday. My wife and I are sharing our twentieth wedding
anniversary by going out for dinner. I was cruising through all the
doom and gloom of Ebola, and other stuff, and discovered a notable. A
cardiologist using an ultrasound machine to check on a patients heart.
When most patients come to the cardiologists come to the office, they
get an ECG (EKG), and the usual vitals by the nurse.
I think that it would be great if a cardiologist TRAINED in BASIC
echocardiography would use the machine to take a look at the patients
heart. A basic echo would assess cardiac output, wall motion, and other
factors like valvular incompetency. The machine to the left is not an
ad. It is one of several machines used in offices around the globe. I
think the cardiologist should use this tool in a BASIC examination of
the patient in the office. Question: reimbursement. Oboma care? We
will see how that shakes out. Here is a link to a useful article.
Cardiologists who used a handheld ultrasound were more likely to make an
accurate diagnosis of patients with common cardiovascular abnormalities
than colleagues who relied on a physical exam, for an estimated savings
of $63 per patient. Handheld ultrasound’s ability to rule out
abnormalities also likely would reduce downstream testing, according to a
study published online Sept. 17 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging.
