Green Berets Get Portable Ultrasound

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Portable ultrasound
 

A portable X-ray machine is standard issue for every Special
Forces battalion, which is great, except for the machines aren't very portable.
It takes a CH-47 Chinook heavy lifter to move one around, which makes them impractical
for small combat outposts in Afghanistan's
more remote areas.

Enter the portable ultrasound machine. A small, laptop sized
device that weighs less than five pounds, runs off
standard radio batteries and at $40,000 a copy cost one third the price of an
X-ray machine. Ultrasound machines use high frequency sound waves to peer deep
into the human body searching out fractures, collapsed lungs, blood in the
abdomen, displaying veins, nerve bundles and of course babies, but that
wouldn't be as much use for special forces.

The Army's 1st
Battalion, 3rd Special Forces group trained up 26 of their medics on
the machines before shipping off to Afghanistan where the new machines proved
their worth and then some in their first combat deployment. Some enterprising
SF medics have developed a Special Operator-Level
Clinical Ultrasound, or SOLCUS, and are spreading the gospel of the machine's
utility to small units deployed in remote locations.

"Using
portable ultrasound in theater is kind of like the guy who first decided to put
a lid on a coffee cup - it just made sense," physician assistant Capt.
William N. Vasios said. "So we used it, and we proved it." The plan
is to get the ultrasound machines and training into the hands of all the SF
groups.

To read more about SF and this new medical gadget click here.  

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