SonoSite Inc. introduced the S-Nerve procedural tool, custom-designed to support the specific needs of anesthesiologists who perform regional anesthesia.
SonoSite showcased the S-Nerve product at the 2007 American Society of Anesthesiologists’ annual meeting in San Francisco and expects to begin customer shipments in the fourth quarter of this year.
The S-Nerve visualization tool is built to help regional anesthesiologists perform nerve block procedures in operating environments, or anywhere in the hospital. It was created after calls by practitioners who expressed a need for a small, high-performance tool, designed to function exclusively as a guidance tool for regional nerve blocks and central line placement.
“The S-Nerve combines excellent image quality with an optimized and targeted user interface for the anesthesiologist,” said Christopher Wiley, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH. “Anesthesiologists are not ultrasonographers. We care about ultrasound as a means to help us perform regional nerve blocks more accurately, quickly and safely. The S-Nerve is a major step toward getting the machine out of the way of the image by eliminating lots of knobs and buttons. Its design will make it easier for the novice user to become more expert.”