What is a vascular ultrasound?
Vascular ultrasound, or duplex ultrasound as it’s also known, is an imaging technology the team at Tinsley Surgical uses to look at your circulation. It’s an invaluable technique for examining how well your blood flows through arteries and veins all over your body.
During the vascular ultrasound procedure, sound waves enter your tissues from the ultrasound machine. The sound waves bounce off your blood cells and back to the device, which records the pattern they make to create a detailed image of your blood vessels.
The Tinsley Surgical team sees the image on a monitor. They can calculate how fast your blood flows through a particular vein or artery. If blood flows too fast, you likely have a narrowing or blockage in the affected blood vessel.
Schedule AppointmentCommonly asked questions about vascular ultrasound:
The team at Tinsley Surgical uses vascular ultrasound to:
- Evaluate blood flow
- Detect narrowing of blood vessels
- Measure the extent of blood vessel narrowing
- Identify blood clots
Developments in technology allow the Tinsley Surgical team to use vascular ultrasound to diagnose and assess more vascular conditions, like abdominal aortic aneurysms and problems with the arteries in your kidneys.
Vascular ultrasound is also used to evaluate the progress of patients who’ve undergone procedures such as bypass grafts and stent placement.
Vascular ultrasound is one of the safest forms of diagnostic testing. It’s entirely noninvasive, so there are no incisions or injections involved. Unlike X-rays, there’s no exposure to radiation. There’s also no need to use a contrast dye, which is necessary for some procedures to create a clearer picture.
Vascular ultrasound provides accurate physiological data concerning the way blood flows in your veins and arteries, which few other techniques can do. Vascular ultrasound is also far more portable than other imaging technologies. For instance, CAT and MRI machines are large and fixed in place, whereas your provider can wheel a vascular ultrasound machine into different places and positions.
Tinsley Surgical has an in-house vascular ultrasound facility that enables them to diagnose patients quickly and conveniently. They can also routinely assess patients who have a higher risk of developing vascular disease, and depending on the severity of any condition they find, the team can perform some procedures in the office as well.