Editorial

Dear Colleagues,

Europe is severely hit by the virus SARS-CoV-2 and most countries report increasing numbers of people affected by COVID-19. WHO has declared it a pandemic, many countries have introduced severe restrictions on travelling and thousands of people around Europe are in quarantine. Currently, the most severely affected European country is Italy, which also experienced some of the first European cases.

Caroline Ewertsen

A lot of thoughts go to the Italian people – especially those working in the healthcare system, but also all those whose friends or families are affected. The current situation should remind us to stand together and help our European friends and take care of each other. It also reminds us that there can be drawbacks to worldwide travelling – apart from our carbon dioxide footprint – which call upon other ways of meeting than physically.

In this issue, a paper by Altersberger et al. report on how introducing videos for teaching students in ultrasound was well perceived and was approved as an additional tool for studying ultrasound. All students had access to eleven videos illustrating the examination technique, image optimization, and nine standardized ultrasound views. Their perception of the videos was evaluated by a questionnaire. The use of videos may be further examined, improved and maybe introduced as educational material, so that for instance ultrasound teaching in the future could rely on students’ reading, videos and training with a simulator: a method, which has been well studied in several papers [1] [2].

Despite advances in imaging, pancreatic cancer still has a poor prognosis and a high number of cases are unresectable at diagnosis. HIFU (high intensity focused ultrasound treatment) may prove useful in treating these patients. Sofuni et al. describe a case of successful treatment with HIFU in a patient deemed unresectable for pancreatic cancer, with potential to prolong the survival.

Another, at some point, new technique – prenatal ultrasound – was used for prenatal diagnoses in two other case reports. One for diagnosing an adrenal neuroblastoma and thereby enabling immediate diagnosis and establishment of strategy at birth (Psarris et al.); another for diagnosing a teratoma in a torqued undescended testis (Walter et al.).

In general, prenatal ultrasound is a well-established method in obstetrics to screen for abnormalities. Wrede et al. investigated whether an isolated echogenic cardiac focus could be used as a predictor for Trisomy 21. A very high number of patients were included in the study, and the authors found that an isolated echogenic cardiac focus between week 14–21 significantly increased the risk of Trisomy 21 in the high-risk and in the low-risk subgroups.

We may still be needed to perform hands-on ultrasound and do intervention on our patients, but implementation of virtual methods and electronic teaching have potential to be included much more in the future.

As we all struggle to fight the COVID-19, I wish you a pleasant reading.

On behalf of the editors
Caroline Ewertsen

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

• References

• 1 Østergaard ML. et al. Four virtual-reality simulators for diagnostic abdominal ultrasound training in radiology. Diagnostics. 2019: 9 50 doi:10.3390/diagnostics9020050
• 2 Kahr Rasmussen N. et al. Simulation-based training of ultrasound-guided procedures in radiology - A systematic review. Ultraschall in Med 2019; 40: 584-602