After a quick prep it’s time to figure out a methodology for your scanning.

If you start out with a thorough plan of attack you will be able to better handle the assessment and documentation of anything that you find, and be confident that nothing was missed. 

My 3 must-do methods for breast scanning:

Whether you spend a full day scanning breasts or have just a few sprinkled into your schedule, I’m certain that at some point these thoughts have crossed your mind: Am I sure I saw everything? Was that a mass or just a shadow? Was I thorough enough? Did I miss anything?

Breasts are one of the trickiest scans I have ever done and I used to find them very intimidating.

However, after my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through a bilateral mastectomy I firmly resolved to find a way to understand breast scanning techniques better and become more confident so that I could help other women the way that my mother was helped.

The following series of articles is due to the wealth of knowledge that I acquired from skilled instructors and coworkers. These are the first of the tricks that helped me become a confident breast sonographer.

Visually, I find the spleen to be a treat.  It's a handsome crescent shaped organ nestled just behind the ribs.  Occasionally you'll find it partnered with a view of the elusive pancreatic tail, cute little splenunculous or even a glimpse of
an adrenal gland.

However, some spleens are just plain difficult to see. The combination of rib shadowing, body habitus, and overlying lung or bowel gas can all conspire to make the spleen one of the shyest organs I’ve ever encountered.

I’ve come to understand the value of my fellow ultrasound friends.

These are the people that I graduated from school with, who have similar experiences and challenges as me, both during school, and after graduation, when we were facing our first few intimidating months of work as a new sonography tech.