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The below comments are attributed to Alistair Royce, University of Melbourne Cardiothoracic Surgeon and Course Director of the COVID-19 Lung Ultrasound course.

Online rapid-response COVID-19 training to help health professionals diagnose lung disease

On 25 October 2019, Professor Alistair Royse, Acting Director of the University of Melbourne – Department of Surgery and Ultrasound Education Group welcomed The Hon. Richard Wynne, Minster of Planning and Housing Victoria to demonstrate the Butterfly iQ ultrasound. The Hon. Richard Wynne has shown his commitment to health and the future by personally donating a Butterfly iQ ultrasound machine to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Dr Royse took some time on Friday to demonstrate this new technology.

Introducing the founding instructors for iHeartScan. Both Professor Michael Veltman who is a specialist cardiothoracic anaesthetist, and Professor John Faris, a specialist anaesthetist, were founding academics involved in the creation and ongoing development of iHeartScan workshops. What led them to develop the workshop was the constant need for rapid assessment tools for cardiac function, both in peri-operative medicine and also in emergency and critical care environment.

Doctors in Melbourne have performed an Australia-first lifesaving heart surgery using pioneering 3D technology. The operation, which used a 3D scanner and mesh sleeve took place while the patient’s heart kept beating.

An Australian surgeon has long championed using arteries rather than veins in heart bypass surgery, and the mounting evidence that he’s right may change world practice

Recent exciting news is that The Ultrasound Education Group team have recently published a research project in Journal of Critical Care, that demonstrated that the University of Melbourne FCU TTE Simulator course was more effective and cheaper to teach focused cardiac ultrasound than the iHeartScan course. This is a major accolade for the team in developing and conducting this course.

Meet James, an intensivist who's passionate about every sound frequency, from ultrasound to piano and guitar

Medical perfusion is the most extreme physiological intervention we perform in medicine today. There’s nothing that comes remotely close. Normally, if you cross clamp someone’s aorta, they are dead in a minute. In medical perfusion, you are successfully taking over the function of the lung and heart for a couple of hours. You’ve got to take this seriously. This is not something that you do on a whim, and you shouldn’t just be ‘winging it’ as an apprenticeship

Heart surgery uses more precious donated red blood cells than almost any other procedure, but a major global study has confirmed that its safe for surgeons to use less

Our FUSE (Focused Ultrasound Simulation Education) courses have travelled internationally! In April this year A/Prof David Canty, from the Ultrasound Education Group, gave a lecture at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Simulation and Skills Centre, Hong Kong

Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) has been widely used in many areas of medicine but has been slow to become integrated into the general management of pregnant women. The physiological and anatomical changes of pregnancy, as well as consumer preferences, make transthoracic echocardiography an ideal monitor for critically ill pregnant women.

Now a permanent fixture in the Centre for Excellence and Innovation in Anesthesia (CEIA), Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital (RBWH), the Brisbane Focused Ultrasound Simulator Education (FUSE) programs are now up and running as established training courses for doctors wanting specialized ultrasound training.

Simply this imaging technology is vastly superior to the current technology (stethoscope and clinical examination) and is also better in many circumstances than a chest x-ray which comes with the additional risk of a dose of radiation. It is very easy to learn and very rapid to perform. The ultrasound technology is becoming much more widely available and within a short space of time, the wider availability of pocket ultrasound machines will make this a practical reality.

Plans are underway to expand the Graduate Certificate, Diploma and Master of Clinical Ultrasound Award Courses to encompass more students of allied health disciplines such as physiotherapists, nurses, medical imaging professionals and perfusionists.

True disruption comes when technology changes the paradigm of medicine and new adopters emerge. A number of studies suggest use of ultrasound will change the diagnosis or management in up to 20-50% of cases. What has limited us in the past in medicine is the cost and size of new equipment; and who has access to it.

Assessment of the lung has traditionally been considered off-limits for ultrasound, because the presence of air and its high acoustic mismatch with surrounding tissues causes a complete reflection of the ultrasound beam and therefore an inability to create direct images of the pulmonary parenchyma.

Three members of the Ultrasound group were awarded prizes for best oral presentations during the Royal Melbourne Hospital Research Week.

Medicine graduates Professors Colin and Alistair Royse have taken a career pathway together armed with a big picture vision coupled with a practical approach.