Ultrasound – seeing with sound

The practice has recently taken delivery of a new ultrasound machine which already proving useful. Ultrasound examinations will be familiar to any one who has had a family in the last twenty years or so as it is a routine part of examinations during pregnancy. Ultrasound has been late coming to the veterinary world, but it is now very widely used. The scanners work by the probe (the bit that is placed on the animal) sending out sound waves. The sound is very high pitched and cannot be heard by humans or animals and has to be detected by receptors in the probe. The sound bounces off parts of the body and changes slightly. It is this change that is picked up by the probe and the computer within the scanner set turns this into a picture. If you think how different your voice sounds in a hall compared to a room full of soft furniture, you get the idea.  Within the practice we use the scanners in all species. 

In small animal work the scanner is used again for pregnancy but, because cats and dogs are slimmer than horses, we can view internal organs. Things like the spleen and liver or kidneys show up very well and often the animals do not have to be anaesthetised as they do for x-rays, so it is an great advantage in the very sick or old. One of the major areas that ultrasound can make a huge difference is in heart disease. Some scanners are able to measure the speed of blood circulating in the heart and, by using colour can show exactly where defects exist in the heart. This leads to earlier and better treatments.