The Ultrasound Room

Welcome to the ultrasound room. This part of the department is often associated with scanning in pregnancy, but here we use ultrasound for diagnosis in a wide variety of conditions. We still perform pregnancy scans in the hospital but usually this takes place in the antenatal clinic.

The ultrasound room is unusual for an x-ray department. There are no warning signs on the door because the machine uses high frequency sound rather than x-rays to produce images of the body. There is no known hazard from ultrasound during its use in medicine for over 40 years.

People come for ultrasound for many different reasons from pain in the abdomen or pelvis, to jaundice, from the investigation of possible kidney disease to the exclusion of possible deep vein thrombosis (long haul syndrome), from swelling of the neck to enlargement of the testicles, from the investigation of funny turns, to exclude a stroke or to the exclusion of cancer when a lump is found almost anywhere in the body.