Latest Ultrasound and Local News

Diagnostic scan images

Diagnostic Imaging is a pivotal part of health care in diagnosing the reasons for patients health complains. There are different imaging techniques such as x-rays, ultrasound, MRI and CT scans.

A woman is having a breast ultrasound scan

A breast ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves to create  images of  the breast tissue. It is primarily used to  diagnose breast lumps or other abnormalities your doctor or you may have found during a physical exam,

Ultrasound scans are a routine part of the prenatal care enabling obstetricians and pregnant women to monitor the development of the unborn baby from as early as 5 weeks gestation.

a woman is having an ultrasound scan of her lower abdomen

Ultrasound is a non-invasive investigation which is being used to monitor and diagnose conditions in many parts of the body. Some men's and women's tests including testicular, gynaecological and pregnancy scans are carried out using ultrasound. In the UK you can choose between private ultrasound and NHS ultrasound scans.

An ultrasound scan uses high-frequency sound waves to produce images of the interior of the human body. These images are displayed on a monitor and can then be stored electronically. The scanner uses the same technology as the sonar used by ships. During your scan, a probe is passed over an area of your body. The sound waves bounce off internal organs and are passed back through the microphone to a computer. The computer turns these sound waves into images that are displayed on a monitor.

Ultrasound is widely used these days as it is painless and safe for adults, children and foetuses. There are no side effects such as the ones associated with ionising radiation produced by CT and plain x-rays.Ultrasound is being used to image mostly solid soft organs such as liver, kidneys, uterus and ovaries, muscles and blood vessels and babies in the womb. It has, however, limited value in organs such as lungs, bone, stomach and bowel/colon.The scan images are black and white but colour Doppler is being used to evaluate organ blood flow and blood vessels and this is what the red and blue colours on the screen are.

Ultrasound is used for a wide variety of scans, including:

A sonographer applying gen on an ultrasound probe to start the private scan

Many people want to know what a private ultrasound cost is in London, but unfortunately, there is no quick answer. Well, there is, but the answer is "it depends…….!"

The private scan prices reported online by Private Health in London and mainly in Harley street where we are located, are ranging from £180 to £400 with an average price of £327 for the private abdominal scan.

Some websites from ultrasound clinics that offer private ultrasound in London advertise ultrasound prices starting from £30. It does make you, however, wonder what you get for your money.

In one of these private scan clinics in London, you get a 10mins scan ... This raises concerns about the diagnostic accuracy of these scans. Would you trust them with your and your loved ones lives?

In another ultrasound centre, it takes you 10mins just to find out which exam is the cheap one and it is the one that no one really needs or wants.

A pregnant lady is having a pregnancy scan

Ultrasound is a routine part of the prenatal care enabling obstetricians and pregnant women to monitor the development of the unborn baby from as early as 5 weeks gestation.

Ultrasound is being used not only to evaluate the normal development of the baby but also to identify the sex and providing 3D and 4D images due to the development of the ultrasound equipment.

In early pregnancy, ultrasound is being used to reassurance that the pregnancy is progressing satisfactorily and that the baby's heartbeat is present. For mother with irregular periods, ultrasound is being used to date the pregnancy through ultrasound measurements.

This early pregnancy scan is of great value to any mother who may have concerns about the health of their baby, who is unsure of how far along she is or simply wishes to see the pregnancy progressing. It can help reduce anxiety.

Fatty liver is a very common ultrasound finding. Find out how stopping alcohol for October can help your liver recover.

October is Medical Ultrasound awareness month aiming to create awareness of the role diagnostic medical sonographers play in the medical community and to educate the public about medical ultrasound and its many uses in healthcare. Most people still associate ultrasound with baby ultrasound scans. Medical ultrasound, however, has much wider uses in the medicine and it is being used to diagnose or exclude a wide of abnormalities such problems with the liver, uterus and ovaries, breasts, testes and even heart.

Medical ultrasound (also known as diagnostic sonography or ultrasonography) is a medical imaging technique that uses sound waves to produce images of internal body structures. Most of the people are aware of the navy sonar being used to track items in the sea. The sonar uses high-frequency sound waves that bounce from objects and return to the transmitter that becomes a receiver. This is the same principle with the radar that is being used to spot aeroplanes in the sky and the infamous speed cameras.

The sonar technology, therefore, has been adapted to be used in medical imaging so the sonographer or radiologists can visualise internal body structures.

An article published in the Daily Mail on 28th of July with the title: 'How could a doctor tell us our baby had DIED in the womb? Couple's fury after 'miscarriage' scan blunder almost led them to abort their healthy daughter', describes how a baby came close to being aborted when the parents told that the baby had died in the early weeks of pregnancy.

The couple were given the devastating news that the mother suffered early fetal demise at 6 weeks gestation during an early pregnancy scan. The scan was performed by a reputable ultrasound clinic in London that specialises in baby scans.

You can read the full article here.

We would like to reassure our pregnant mothers that in our London ultrasound clinic our sonographers follow the latest guidelines from NICE, ISUOG and BMUS and that we are not trying to cut corners by offering substandard cheap private scans.

The NICE guidelines for diagnosing viable intrauterine pregnancy using ultrasound are as follows:

Prudential RideLondon cycling event will take place on Saturday 28th of July in central London and on Sunday 29th of July in closed roads in the east, central and south-west London, and in parts of Surrey.

As the London cycling event involves road closures and the London transport system will be significantly busier than usual this can affect your travelling time to our ultrasound clinic in Harley Street.

According to Transport for London:

Road closures will impact more than the immediate Prudential RideLondon event routes, which cannot be crossed by vehicles. Drivers are advised to, wherever possible, avoid areas near and around the event routes as follows:

Address:

29 Weymouth Street                                                                                                                   

Marylebone, London,

W1G 7DB

The main reason of having a private scan in London is to jump the NHS que that can be up to 6 weeks long. Other than faster diagnosis and treatments people choose to have a private scan due to the flexibility of choosing a date and time that doesnt affect their working life and daily plans.

Many people want to know what a private ultrasound cost is in London, but unfortunately there is no quick answer. Well, there is, but the answer is "it depends…….!"

The private scan prices reported online by Private Health in London  and mainly in Harley street where we are located ranging from £180 to £400 with an average price of £327 for the private abdominal scan.

Some websites from ultrasound clinics that offer private scans in London advertise ultrasound prices starting from £30. It does makes you however wonder what you get for your money.

In one of the private scan clinics in London you get a 10mins scan ... This raises concerns about the diagnostic accuracy of these scans. Would you trust them with your and your loved ones lives?

Our private scan clinic in London's Harley Street is always at the forefront of customer care and we are extremely happy to announce that after popular demand, we are now able to offer ultrasound scans during your lunch break. We are always doing our best to offer you flexible scan appointments around your schedule and now we are able to offer you the flexibility of giving your ultrasound scan during your lunch break.

Our clinic is located in the busiest part from London just a couple of minutes walk from Oxford Street and Regent Street and quite often our clients work locally requested scans on their lunch time. Unfortunately we were not able to fulfil their request until now.

As of this week you can book a convenient private scan during your lunchtime between the hours o12 and 2pm. This will help to significantly reduce the convenience associated with waiting to hear of your appointment after work and probably missing the train back home.

You can book your private ultrasound scan by using our online booking system or by calling our clinic. Please also remember that some scans such as the abdominal ultrasound scan requires at least 4 hours fasting.

It is very common for clients to walk in our ultrasound clinic in Harley Street, London to check for any available scan slots, especially on their lunch breaks as our clinic is located in the heart of London. 

We do understand that it is not always possible to wait and schedule a private ultrasound and we always do our best to accommodate any walk-in clients. 

Sometimes, however, this may not be possible due to fully booked schedule. There are also multiple ultrasound exams that some preparation may be necessary and if you, therefore, come prepared the ultrasound examination may be unsatisfactory and won’t be able to give you the answers you’re looking for. A repeat scan might be necessary in these cases.

As will always do our utmost to offer same day scans to clients who need them and to avoid disappointment the best way to check our availability and if we can accommodate any walk-in clients is to either check our online booking system or give us a call on 020 3633 4902.

The Pride in London parade is an event to raise awareness to the world about issues affecting every part of London’s LGBT+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning, intersex, non-binary, asexual polysexual, genderqueer and gender variant people).

The parade is the biggest LGBT+ parade in the UK with thousands of people’s traveling to London and last year pulled an estimated crowd of nearly 1 million people.

Pride in London is run entirely by volunteers with support from the Mayor of London, Westminster City Council, the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London, the London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service.

Alongside the parade they will be multiple events scheduled in various locations in London:

Trafalgar Square Stage, where the parade will finish has confirmed multiple famous guests such as Sophie Ellis-Bextor and The Mayor of London.

An ultrasound scan uses sound waves to obtain internal images of the body. In some of the ultrasound examinations, such the abdominal and pelvic scans you require to prepare before the scan. In other scans however such as the breast, hernia and shoulder scans, no preparation is required. Our clients regularly ask us why they need to prepare.

The main ultrasound examinations that need preparation is the abdominal scan, urinary tract and the pelvic scan.

 For the abdominal scan, you need to fast for at least four hours. In some Private Ultrasound clinics and in the NHS you require to fast for at least six hours.  There is widespread inaccurate information online regarding the length of fasting for an abdominal scan. For example, Healthline recommends 12 hours fasting which is nothing more than outdated,  cruel and unnecessary. 

You are having an ultrasound scan or your doctor recommended a colour Doppler, duplex or triplex scan. It is normal to get confused as these are not terms that you use every day. On this post, we will try to demystify some of the terms related to ultrasound scanning.

Ultrasound was discovered in 1880 by Jacques and Pierre Curie and its first application was to detect submarines in 1917. In 1956, a team led by Obstetrician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown develop the first ultrasound machine to be used in clinical practice. As you can imagine the first applications of ultrasound were primarily in baby scanning. By the end of the 20th century, ultrasound scans were extensively used in maternity clinics.

Initially, the ultrasound images used to be black and white – and still are. These images are called 2D images as being two-dimensional.

Colour Doppler or colour flow Doppler, that was discovered by Christian Doppler in 1841, is the technology to visualize blood flow during an ultrasound scan. Colour flow is being used all the time these days as it helps to differentiate between different structures, for example, a blood vessel and a cyst that can have the similar appearance on ultrasound. It helps to evaluate the vascularity of a tumour found for example in the breast scan, pelvic scan or liver scan. It helps to evaluate vascularity of whole organs such as in the thyroid scan in cases of thyroiditis.

The General Medical Council gave a UK General Practioner an official warning for failing to diagnose leg deep vein thrombosis on a patient. The patient consequently died from pulmonary embolism.

The patient from Newbury saw the GP, Dr Stiff multiple times with concerns about deep vein thrombosis. The General Medical Council investigation concluded that Dr Stiff  failed to adequately assess the patient's swollen ankle and failed to refer the patient for further investigations to exclude deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The GP performed a Deep vein thrombosis ultrasound scan of the leg, despite the fact that he had failed to maintain a record of any continuing professional development in ultrasound scanning since 2002.

Strawberry Hill Medical Centre where Dr. Stiff works issued a statement saying:

"Having been this patient’s general practitioner for many years, Dr. Stiff is sorry for and fully understands the distress that this patient’s death will have caused her family."

Unfortunately failing to diagnose deep-vein thrombosis happens too often and it is unacceptable when you consider that a simple 10 minutes DVT ultrasound scan can diagnose the disease and save the patient's life. Dr Stiff performed a DVT ultrasound scan on the patient, he did not, however, have the experience and knowledge required to definitely exclude or confirmed a DVT.

We saw lately in the news how a GP failed to refer a lady for a neck and thyroid ultrasound scan after she complained about a lump in the neck. Unfortunately, the patient later dies from thyroid cancer. 

The patient visited the GP with a newly lump presented in her neck. After multiple visit in a period of 6 months, concerned that the lump was increasing in size, the GP decided to refer her for an ultrasound scan.

When eventually the patient had the scan and consequent FNA the lump diagnosed as an inoperative thyroid cancer and the patient subsequently died.

This is another sad story, heard too often. The same happened to 2 other patients that doctors missed blood clots and the patients died. You can read these stories here and here.