Hospital takes delivery of Sonosite X-Porte ultrasound machine

The Royal Oldham Hospital takes delivery of the first Sonosite X-Porte ultrasound machine to be shipped out of America

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The Royal Oldham Hospital has taken delivery of a Sonosite X-Porte ultrasound machine.

The new machine was provided to the A&E department at Oldham by Sonosite in recognition of the international ultrasound teaching which  Rip Gangahar, consultant in A&E, has undertaken over the last seven years.

The machine, which is the latest model from Sonosite, was the first to be shipped out of the USA and so in recognition of this, engineers who were involved in the construction of the machine autographed the packaging on the machine, sending good luck messages from Seattle, USA, to staff in Oldham.

Mr Gangahar said: "We are immensely grateful to Sonosite for sending this new ultrasound machine to us. We already had one of their machines within the accident and emergency department, but they kindly agreed to swap it for the brand new version in recognition of my contribution to US training. This has saved the Trust in excess of £25,000.

”The X-Porte provides far superior images compared to previous portable ultrasound machines we have used in the emergency department. This will help us to perform more detailed evaluations on patients than was previously possible and thereby increase our diagnostic capability. It provides much better tissue definition and has additional features which will help immensely with procedures such as intra venous cannulation and nerve blocks.”

Around 10,000 patients a year will be clinically evaluated using the high-tech portable ultrasound machine in the A&E department. Although it can be used on all patients, it will have the greatest impact on the sickest patients who will be in the resuscitation room.

Mr Gangahar has been involved in teaching ultrasound techniques around the world for the last seven years. He was elected Chairman of the Ultrasound group for The International Federation of Emergency Medicine two years ago and has directed US course for the European Society of Emergency Medicine in Munich, Valencia, Stockholm and Kos. He is also Faculty for The American Academy for Emergency Medicine as well as the Emergency Medicine Society in South Africa and involved with training of emergency doctors in Malta, Qatar, Oman and Abu Dhabi. His IFEM group have developed the first International Ultrasound Curriculum.