Our very own in-house anesthesiologist Dr.O had a chance yesterday to take a look at the S-Nerve™, a specialized vertical ultrasound designed for gas passers of his kind. The device was just introduced at the American Society of Anesthesiologists meeting in San Francisco. He found the system sports a wide range of functions via a number of ultrasound probes, and it is easy to use and quite intuitive. As the name suggests, the S-Nerve™ is primarily designed for guidance with peripheral nerve blocks. However, we can also imagine using this tool for assistance with central line and a-line placements, epiaortic scanning during open heart surgery, vein mappings, and other procedures that can benefit from ultrasound guidance.
Here’s how the company touts its “revolutionary visualization tool”:
The S-Nerve visualization tool is built to help regional anesthesiologists perform nerve block procedures in crowded, busy operating environments or anywhere in the hospital. Its breakthrough image quality, speed and simplicity were designed with input from leading practitioners who expressed a substantive need for a small, high-performance tool, designed to function exclusively as a guidance tool for regional nerve blocks and central line placement…
To create this radically new visualization tool, SonoSite designed a user interface, software and controls that address the procedural needs of the anesthesiologist combined with the same ground breaking processing power, image quality and data management features of the recently introduced M-Turbo™ system. The M-Turbo system is 16 times more powerful than SonoSite’s industry leading MicroMaxx® system.
This peerless processing power enables the simultaneous deployment of SonoSite’s three new, advanced proprietary algorithms, SonoADAPT™, SonoHD™, and SonoMB™. Together these three technologies produce dramatic improvements in image quality.
With the S-Nerve tool, anesthesiologists get breakthrough image quality from a device that can acquire the optimal image of hard-to-reach nerve structures with just two dials. The S-Nerve features a standard VESA® compliant mounting interface, a new concept for an ultrasound tool. Attached to the operating theater or block room wall or ceiling, the device has zero footprint, a critical benefit in such crowded environments. Mounted on an IV pole or hand-carried to the patient point-of-care, the S-Nerve tool can easily be moved from patient to patient in a busy pre-operative center.
SonoSite is introducing the S-Nerve device with an unprecedented combination of several curved and linear array transducers for virtually every anatomical and clinical anesthesia application. The unmatched breadth of transducers allows the anesthesiologist to perform the most difficult upper and lower extremity blocks as well as confidently place intravascular lines in the desired vessels. The transducers, like the S-Nerve, are designed specifically to withstand the demanding environment of the operating room or nerve block suite. They are also interchangeable with the new M-Turbo system and the new image optimization algorithms are available on all S-Nerve transducers and exam types.
In terms of the price, SonoSite did not give us a quote. All they could say is that it all depends on the package: how many and what kinds of probes you need.
Press release: SonoSite Introduces Revolutionary Visualization Tool For Anesthesiologists …
Product page…
SonoSite flashbacks: M-Turbo™: New Portable Ultrasound from SonoSite; The SonoSite® MicroMaxx™; Titan
