Linear or curvilinear? Which frequency? And what should you actually be doing before the probe touches the patient?
Colin Rigney and Ryan Martin open From Probe to Practice with the decisions that quietly set the ceiling on every MSK ultrasound exam you run — probe selection, frequency, gain, and the positioning nobody talks about until an injection goes sideways.
Ryan's rule, from his mentor Wayne Smith: "Scan everything with a linear probe until you cannot." Colin's version of the same idea: "Ultrasound is an extension of your clinical brain." Both come back to intent — why are you scanning, and will it change what happens to this patient?
Also in this episode: a case from that same morning where a patient's anterior hip sat almost 12 cm deep and the linear probe simply could not reach it, why the curvilinear's crossing arrays can make a straight bone look curved, what to do when your clinic owns exactly one probe, and the scouting habit that prevents the most common avoidable injection problem.
The Monday-morning takeaway: always scout in the position you're going to inject in. A shoulder scouted seated and injected supine is a different shoulder.
In this episode:
0:00 — Ultrasound is an extension of your clinical brain
0:53 — Welcome to From Probe to Practice
1:51 — Before you touch the probe: why are you doing this?
3:02 — Scope of practice and clinical reasoning
4:24 — Optimisation starts before the patient
5:37 — Linear, curvilinear, hockey stick
6:32 — Use a linear probe whenever you can
7:03 — Trading depth for resolution
9:35 — The case that forced a curvilinear
10:51 — When you only have one probe
11:53 — The physics caveat nobody mentions
14:01 — Patient position, practitioner position
15:17 — Scout in the position you'll inject
16:02 — Start with why
17:18 — If you're not optimising the gain
0:00 — Ultrasound is an extension of your clinical brain
0:53 — Welcome to From Probe to Practice
1:51 — Before you touch the probe: why are you doing this?
3:02 — Scope of practice and clinical reasoning
4:24 — Optimisation starts before the patient
5:37 — Linear, curvilinear, hockey stick
6:32 — Use a linear probe whenever you can
7:03 — Trading depth for resolution
9:35 — The case that forced a curvilinear
10:51 — When you only have one probe
11:53 — The physics caveat nobody mentions
14:01 — Patient position, practitioner position
15:17 — Scout in the position you'll inject
16:02 — Start with why
17:18 — If you're not optimising the gain
New episodes every Tuesday.
From Probe to Practice is brought to you by the Advanced MSK Ultrasound Center — courses, residency and live workshops: https://amsku.com
