Editorial

Dear Colleagues,

Evidence based medicine and guidelines have considerably changed our medical thinking and practice in the last few decades, and they are the key point of this first issue of UIO in 2019.

G. Lock

The issue starts with an overview on purpose, principles and methodology for clinical practice guidelines, position statements and technological reviews in the field of clinical ultrasound, compiled by leading experts of the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB). And, appropriately, it ends with such a thorough clinical practice guideline, introducing us to the EFSUMB recommendations on endorectal, endoanal and perineal ultrasound. These recommendations provide excellent examples of techniques and pictures of a special field of ultrasonography, including modern techniques like CEUS, elastography or 3 D reconstruction. Especially perineal ultrasound (PNUS) as a readily available, cheap and noninvasive method may merit more attention for the evaluation of anal and perianal pain, lesions or functional disturbances.

These clinical guidelines are complemented by a pictorial review on the role of contrast agents in ultrasound-guided biopsy of focal liver lesions. CEUS, of course, may help in target visualisation, improve the quality of the biopsy specimen by choosing the best site for biopsy – or, to the patients delight, biopsy will be made superfluous if CEUS correctly diagnoses the benign nature of a given focal liver lesion. T. Lorentzen and C. P. Nolsoe from Copenhagen have assorted nice pictures and videos to demonstrate these points.

Last not least, the issue presents two original papers. K.L. Hansen and coworkers report on preliminary data on vector flow imaging in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease in newborns, speculating that this angle-independent non-invasive ultrasound modality may provide additional diagnostic information in this situation. And T. Mazzawi and colleagues have resuscitated the ultrasonographic method of antral area measurement to determine gastric emptying after low and high caloric meals. Remarkably, this technique was successfully applied by supervised medical students without extensive previous ultrasound experience.

I do hope you will enjoy this issue and will derive advantage for your clinical practice!

Yours sincerely,

G. Lock