Paul Heyse, MD Speaks About Vascular Ultrasound Video Transcript

Vascular ultrasound is the use of sonography similar to what obstetricians use to check for babies in order to evaluate vascular system. That is to say the arteries and veins in the body. It's painless and it doesn't involve any injections or needle sticks but it provides us with images of the arteries and veins in the body.

Vascular ultrasound helps a diagnosis of vascular conditions of those related to pain problems or artery problems and also helps in planning treatment of problems that are related to arteries and veins.  There's really no preparation for the tests which makes it easy for the patient, except if we are doing an examination of the vessels in the abdomen, then requires an overnight fast. Otherwise typically, for imaging arteries in the neck or the arms or legs, it doesn't involve any preparation whatsoever. The patient comes in, is laid on a cart, is asked to put a gown on and then the ultrasound technician who does the test places a gel on the skin and then this allows the ultrasound device to be placed on the skin and then the ultrasound, the high-frequency sound waves, are passed through the tissue and images are taken and pictures of the arteries and veins can be recorded based on the echoes that are produced from the ultrasound waves. Vascular ultrasound typically will take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to do an evaluation of the arteries in the neck or the arms or legs. Whether it's arterial or venous, it takes typically between 15 and 30 minutes. Again it is a painless test there are no injections, no needles involved and there's no special preparation.

Again depending on the part of the body we’re talking about, typically the vascular ultrasound typically we’ll see predominantly problems related to the carotid arteries in the neck and artery problems in the arms, legs, as well as vein problems in the arms and legs. If we're talking about the carotid arteries in the neck, we're concerned about stroke prevention, trying to diagnose plaque that builds up in the carotid arteries and when it reaches a certain level causing a certain blockage then treatment may be recommended at that point and the ultrasound is used as a screening test in order to obtain that information so that no further expensive invasive testing could be done to confirm the ultrasonic findings. Patients with, for example, leg complaints, leg swellings are very common, leg pain and leg swelling are a very common presentation and these may be related to vascular problems involving the arterial system, such as hardening of the arteries, or vein problems, such as blood clots, phlebitis, these can all be diagnosed with the vascular ultrasound. So those are the most common problems we’ll deal with -- problems related to stroke prevention and problems related to pain and swelling in either the upper or lower extremities. There are other specialized tests we do but the most common ones are the ones I mentioned.

The tests are indicated for a variety of things.  They can either be screening tests, or they can be for patients that are symptomatic, that are actually having problems. Screening tests being for patients with no symptoms, but at risk for a potential artery or vein problem.  Artery problem risks would include such things as diabetes, smoking, high cholesterol, hypertension, age, family history of arterial problems, strokes, heart attacks, etc. This patients can be screened, before symptoms develop, so that a prevention program can be set up or it can be followed over time. Symptomatic patients, patients that present with actual symptoms, the ultrasound is valuable in making diagnosis and planning treatment.