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How Butterfly’s Handheld Probe Speeds Up Clinical Insights
Anytime a parent or family member takes their child to the emergency department, they can feel overwhelmed by questions and fears. They want answers and next steps as quickly and as accurately as possible.
For pediatric emergency physicians caring for these patients, a handheld probe transforms diagnostics and makes point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) even more accessible. The iQ3™ delivers the image quality to help answer clinical questions in minutes, aiding in making the right diagnosis and treatment, guiding families through care, and, in some cases, making a scary situation a little less frightening.
Dr. Russ Horowitz, pediatric emergency physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital, has been teaching other physicians how to use POCUS for 15 years. As he examines children in emergency situations, he keeps the Butterfly probe in his pocket to rise to the unique challenges of diagnosing young patients.
Whole-Body Scanning with a Single Probe
Pediatric emergency physicians encounter patients across a range of ages with symptoms and conditions that vary in complexity. They may need advanced diagnostic capabilities to assess any part of the patient’s body and identify next steps at the point-of-care.
Even in an emergency department with available testing, radiology studies can take hours to be performed and may require the child to travel to a different part of the hospital. This can delay diagnosis and focused treatment, exposes children to radiation, and can be traumatic for young patients.
Handheld POCUS changes everything. With one Butterfly probe in my pocket, I can look at multiple parts of the body, answer clinical questions, and identify a likely diagnosis in minutes. I don’t have to change probes or wheel in a big machine, and it allows me to make decisions really fast.
The iQ3 also provides better information to determine if an advanced test with more radiation is needed.
For example, a child with a fever often presents with faster breathing and heart rate, but it’s not immediately clear if those symptoms are due to the fever or another problem. Dr. Horowitz scans their heart and lungs within about three minutes to identify the source of the problem without changing probes or wheeling in a cart.
In this rare but dramatic instance, Dr. Horowitz described a recent case of a young teenage girl who presented after fainting. Clinicians might not think of pregnancy right away in someone who is 12 or 13, so that diagnosis could be low on their differential. Her symptoms may be attributed to common fainting or anxiety, and pregnancy or a ruptured ectopic pregnancy may be overlooked. However, part of Dr. Horowitz’s work up is to check for free fluid in the patient’s abdomen using the Butterfly iQ3. In this case, the ruptured ectopic diagnosis was made very quickly, allowing him to get her treated expeditiously for this life threatening condition.
“The list of what can cause someone to faint is pretty long,” he said. “Checking the abdomen with the Butterfly probe doesn’t require the patient to admit to being sexually active. I can discover an ectopic pregnancy and save her life. It’s not a rare disease, but it is unusual in this case because of the way we think of our patients as children.”
The iQ3 makes the barriers to POCUS so low that clinicians can evaluate for conditions that wouldn’t normally be top of mind. This saves time for the patient and the clinician alike, because they don’t have to investigate the many other possible reasons for the patient’s symptoms.
When we can make a diagnostic decision fast, we don’t have to spend all the time and cognitive energy to explore what the patient’s condition is not.
Versatility and Accessibility of Butterfly for Pediatric Care
When you have multiple caretakers, a stroller, a young patient, and a clinician crowded in a hospital room, navigating the room to even examine the patient can be a challenge. In addition, a toddler who’s in pain or scared often moves from one parent or place to another. Fitting a big cart into a small room and using it to scan a wiggly child is an uphill battle.
“The cart-based machine is a separate device that we have to move, but the Butterfly device is an extension of me. If I can simply get my body next to the patient, I can do the ultrasound,” Dr. Horowitz explains. He can move through the room with ease to scan a child less frightened by a large wheeled-in cart.
As he is scanning, he shows and explains the results on his phone screen to the parents, involving them in the diagnosis and decision-making. When scanning a child’s lungs, for instance, he tells parents that horizontal lines are normal, while vertical lines indicate the possibility of pneumonia. Within three to five minutes, families gain more information about their child’s condition and more confidence about the treatment.
When using the iQ3, the family often feels like we spend more time with them and provide more information because we’re including them in the process.
Dr. Horowitz’s department uses Compass, Butterfly’s cloud-based software solution, for image documentation and archiving. After he enters a patient’s room and learns about the circumstances, he begins imaging. He can quickly select the patient from a patient worklist, complete documentation from built-in worksheets, sign the scan, and have the images and documentation sent into the hospital’s systems.
More Focused Care with a Single Probe and a Single Visit
When Dr. Horowitz sees a patient in the emergency department, he is focused on delivering the best care to the child and their family. When he has to leave an exam room to get a POCUS cart, he is often pulled aside by co-workers for questions or consultations, which delays the care of the patient in that room.
“Anything that distracts me from my direct workflow takes me away from what I need to do for the patient,” he says. “Having the Butterfly in my pocket means I walk into the room, I do my evaluation, and we have all that information so fast that I can direct the care and treatment straight away.”
The convenience of handheld POCUS allows Dr. Horowitz to focus on the young patient and family in front of him, reach a diagnosis, and initiate next steps quickly. From there, he can move on to the next patient needing to be seen and give them the best of his attention as well.
Advanced Answers with an Easy-to-Use Probe
Dr. Horowitz appreciates the fantastic image quality of the iQ3 and says that this handheld device lowers the barrier to adopt ultrasound, even for experienced practitioners who may hesitate to learn a new tool. The user-friendly iOS or Android interface means that virtually anyone can successfully use the handheld Butterfly probe to scan patients and answer clinical questions.
The Butterfly app is intuitive, allowing practitioners to focus on the body part they’re scanning: “That’s the way we as practitioners think. If I’m going to look at someone’s lung, I just press ‘lung’ and the probe does all the work for me, rather than having to think about physics and choosing the right probe.”
The iQ3 is changing the way pediatric physicians assess and diagnose their patients, delivering in-depth information and answers with a simple, accessible user experience. For Dr. Horowitz, the choice for point-of-care ultrasound is a clear one — he’d pick the Butterfly iQ3 probe every time.
Given the choice of something that’s easy to use versus something that’s complicated, almost every person is going to say, ‘If it answers my questions and it’s easy to use, I’m going to pick that one.’
Harness the Power of Handheld
See for yourself how POCUS powered by the Butterfly iQ3 and Compass enables clinicians in pediatric emergency medicine to expedite care for young patients and their families. Book a demo with our team to see the high image quality and user-friendly interface for yourself.
Ready to transition to an encounter-based approach and deploy ultrasound in your department?
Learn more about how Compass can help, or contact your sales representative today.
