© Orchard Veterinary Group
Ultrasound scanning
Most people would probably think of babies when thinking of an ultrasound scanner.
The level of detail and accuracy of modern scanners is astounding, giving vivid
representations of the internal organs.
Using our scanner we too diagnose pregnancy in dogs and cats and can give vital information
about the foetuses such as size, movement and heart beat. What no one can do however
is accurately predict the number of pups or kittens which will be born; even the
most expert ulrtasonographer will not claim to be able to do this accurately. It
is simply not possible for all sorts of reasons, not least because foetuses overlap
so much in the uterus it is impossible to tell where one ends and another begins.
There is much more to a scanner than just the diagnosis of pregnancy however. Scanners
can be used to look inside the heart and measure changes in size, to see damaged
valves and calculate how well the heart is working by measuring the speed that blood
travels through it. Suspicious internal masses can be examined and even sampled
without the need for invasive surgery and it is possible to investigate cancers to
determine whether and how far they might have spread before embarking on treatment.
When you consider that almost all of these investigations can be done without the
need for an anaesthetic or sedative then you’ll realise that this technology is of
real benefit to our vets and their patients.
Technical stuff
An ultrasound scanner works using the same principle that dolphins use to view the
world around them.
Harmless, high frequency sound waves are sent out by a probe and the returning echoes
are picked up again.
The echoes vary depending on what the sound waves are bouncing back from and a computer
uses this difference to build up a virtual picture of tissues within the beam of
sound.
