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ER doc and Ultimate Men’s Health Guy returns from teaching ultrasound in Peru

Jedidiah Ballard, DO, who was recently featured on TV’s The Doctors, helped teach a four-day diagnostic ultrasound class in Lima, Peru.

When he’s not practicing, teaching emergency medicine at Augusta (Georgia) University, or making the rounds as this year’s Ultimate Men’s Health Guy, Jedidiah Ballard, DO, periodically provides ultrasound training for health care professionals in Latin America.

Dr. Ballard and eight colleagues from Augusta University, including osteopathic emergency medicine physician Lee LaRavia, DO, recently returned from teaching a four-day course on clinical ultrasound in tropical infectious diseases at Cayetano Heredia Hospital in Lima, Peru.

Jedidiah Ballard, DO, demonstrates how diagnostic ultrasound works for a young hospital patient in Lima, Peru.

Dr. Ballard and his colleagues trained recently graduated Peruvian medical students and a group of 31 students from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, in diagnostic ultrasound for limited-resource settings.

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“In many such places, medical imaging is not a realistic option, as patients only receive the medical care they are personally able to afford,” Dr. Ballard explains. “However, ultrasound has become much more portable—you can get an app and attach a probe to any Samsung tablet to perform ultrasound—which can significantly aid in bedside diagnosis where other imaging isn’t possible.”

As part of the course, Dr. Ballard’s group performed free ultrasounds on willing patients at two Lima hospitals. The physicians made several findings that changed those patients’ course of care, including diagnosing significant gallstone disease in a young woman with upper abdominal pain and showing that a woman who’d been treated for an abscess had healed enough to be discharged.

“When we encountered relevant findings, we told the patient’s care team and put a note in his or her chart,” says Dr. Ballard. “Sometimes these scans significantly affect patient care, since CT scans are possible in Peru but are much more difficult to obtain than in the U.S.”

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