Objetives of the course

Fine needle aspiration is a minimally invasive test that allows sampling of palpable or not palpable superficial lesions and provides a large amount of diagnostic information.
The profitability of this process is maximized when the pathologist is directly involved in the process of taking the sample, triage method and its interpretation.

Interventional ultrasound has become a common practice in many medical specialties and given the significant increase in patient safety in procedures, its use will continue to expand to a greater number of procedures.

POCUS is defined as a point-of-care ultrasonography performed by the healthcare professional in real time. This concept allows to obtain dynamic images that contribute to improve the correlation with the patient's clinical manifestations and is used by a wide variety of medical specialties for different purposes.

If we understand ultrasound as a dynamic macroscopic examination, in real time and on screen, we find that a specialty as pathology, that is macroscopist by nature, could easily learn to use this technology for the benefit of daily practice, especially in the area of diagnostic puncture procedures (fine-needle aspiration and core-needle biopsy).

General objectives:

- Provide general knowledge of ultrasound, sufficient to recognize the normal anatomy and therefore the lesions susceptible to sample.
- Provide the necessary knowledge so that the pathologist feels capable of performing the procedure under ultrasound image guidance.

Specific objectives:

- Correlate the physical examination and clinical history with the ultrasound findings.
- Recognize the normal anatomy of superficial tissues (breast, thyroid, lymph node and superficial soft tissue) under ultrasound examination.
- Identify ultrasound criteria that guide the benign or malignant nature of the lesion.
- Recognize the use and limitations of the ultrasound image control technique.
- Recognize the advantages and disadvantages of practicing the procedure without having a radiologist.
- Recognize and manage the necessary tools to carry out the test.
- Perform fine-needle aspiration and core-needle biopsy with ultrasound guidance.
- Describe the necessary elements to include in an FNA or CNB report performed by the interventional pathologist, under ultrasound image guidance.

Methodology:

This is an intensive course that alternates theoretical sessions about the fundamentals of ultrasound, clinical cases and new aspects of patient management in the interventional clinic, with practical workshops to perform fine-needle aspiration and core-needle biopsy.

The workshops are held on simulation, synthetic and biological phantoms with real puncture and biopsy devices, in small groups of participants.

Course modules:

1. COURSE OPENING
2. INTRODUCTION TO ULTRASOUND IMAGING
3. DISINFECTION, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PORTABILITY IN ULTRASOUND
4. PROCEDURES IN INTERVENTIONAL PATHOLOGY
5. THE ROLE OF THE TECHNICIAN IN THE INTERVENTIONAL PATHOLOGY PRACTICE
6. GROUP PRACTICE WORKSHOPS
7. CLINICAL CASES
8. ANTITHROMBOTIC THERAPY MANAGEMENT IN INTERVENTIONAL PROCEDURES
9. LOCAL ANESTHETICS IN INTERVENTIONAL PROCEDURES
10. EXPERIENCE IN SPAIN
11. PERCUTANEOUS MUSCLE BIOPSY
12. THYROID GLAND, LYMPH NODES, SALIVARY GLANDS
13. ONE-STOP PATHOLOGY DIAGNOSIS
14. PROTOCOL TEMPLATE PROPOSAL
15. STRATEGIES FOR SETTING UP AN INTERVENTIONAL PRACTICE
16. EVALUATION AND CERTIFICATES

Aimed at:

Physicians specialized in pathology with special interest in ultrasound-guided puncture procedures for diagnosis.
Pathology residents.