Advancing infection control in Australasian medical ultrasound practice

Abstract

Introduction/Aims: Australasia is witnessing a rapidly increasing use of diagnostic medical ultrasound in clinical practice with industry statistics giving a conservative estimate of ten million scans performed annually in Australia and New Zealand. Ultrasound practice has broadened from its traditional use in radiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, vascular and cardiology specialties to embrace emergency medicine, rheumatology, midwifery, physiotherapy, paramedics and other point of care practice. With this expansion of practice comes an increase in the potential risk for ultrasound transmitted bacterial or viral infection due to suboptimal cleaning habits of transducers, cords and keyboards. Results/Conclusion: This study describes results of an Australasian survey on the disinfection and hygiene practice in medical ultrasound. Results highlighted a significant need for updated guidelines and education on infection prevention and control in medical ultrasound.

Glow Powder: See the Germs? An Innovative Teaching Technique in a Student Sonography Laboratory

“…These areas are not currently included in the Cleaning and Disinfection official statement by the AIUM, 26 but this study’s findings regarding contamination on keyboards, cables, and gel bottles were consistent with other studies. 3,25 Westerway and Basseal 27 reported more people cleaned the transducer cables than the keyboards, and only 10% cleaned the keyboard after every patient. Even when the transducers are cleaned between patients, most sonographers do not clean the cables or keyboards between patients.…”

Ultrasound probe use and reprocessing: Results from a national survey among U.S. infection preventionists

“…The response rate and sample size are similar to ultrasound surveys from Australia/New Zealand and Europe. 25,26 Most IPs worked in a hospital setting (59.5%). The remaining respondents were from long-term care, long-term acute care, outpatient clinics, or ambulatory surgery centers (<10% each).…”

1-3 Piezoelectric Composite Ferroelectric Materials in Smart Medical Ultrasonic Diagnostic Transducers

“…Combined with the research progress at home and abroad, different scholars have made certain explorations in the finite element research of ultrasonic transducers and ferroelectric materials: Dudley N J studied A simple "connector test" was studied to diagnose the operation of the elements in the ultrasonic transducer array, and has been applied to the phased array, the purpose is to further adjust the multi-line transducer array test [1]. Westerway SC studied Australia's findings on medical ultrasound disinfection and hygiene practices, and the results emphasized that there is an urgent need to update medical ultrasound infection prevention and control guidelines [2].Hager PA proposed a configurable beam former , and proved that the entire 3-D delay and summing beamforming can be fully digitalized on a single chip, without the need for off-chip memory [3].Lee W gave an overview of medical ultrasound imaging transducers, and detailed structural components of typical transducers. Including the active layer, the acoustic matching layer, the backing block, the acoustic lens and the notch [4].Lei M conducted a theoretical study, obtained the corresponding dielectric constant, tunability and electric field distribution from finite element analysis, and analyzed the relationship between these parameters.…”

“…The key points of research and innovation of this article are as follows: (1) This article gives a comprehensive introduction to the ultrasonic transducer, and gives the finite element analysis of the 1-3 piezoelectric composite ferroelectric material; (2) The effect and far-reaching influence of PZT volume fraction, aspect ratio and the number of primitives on the finite element modeling of 1-3 spherical crown piezoelectric composites are discussed. Then it was verified by experiment and ANSYS performance analysis of ultrasonic diagnostic transducer.…”