The vascular department at Birmingham's Heart of England NHS Trust, led by Professor Andrew Bradbury, is using two SonoSite MicroMaxx hand-carried ultrasound systems to cut waiting times for outpatient diagnosis and the treatment of varicose veins with endovenous chemical ablation, as well as general vascular surgery.
Gareth Bate, a vascular specialist nurse at the hospital, explained: "The portability of the SonoSite systems has totally transformed the way that we work. Our outpatient clinics are one-stop now; most patients have an ultrasound scan and a diagnosis straightaway.
We use the MicroMaxx system for most of our varicose veins procedures which are now treated not with surgery, but with ultrasound-guided foam sclerotherapy, also known as endovenous chemical ablation, a very straightforward technique that requires only local anaesthetic and means the patients are treated as out patients and have no cuts to their legs. We use ultrasound guidance to insert little plastic tubes into the veins and inject special foam to block the vein so that it shrivels up over several weeks.
“Overall, the system has made an enormous impact on the way we work. We used to have a waiting list of about 9 months for varicose vein surgery but we now treat 16 patients per week with foam sclerotherapy and have a wait of only a few weeks. The technique has also freed up our operating lists for more pressing arterial cases and, as a result, we have really cut down all our vascular surgery waiting lists to just a few weeks."
