This week we visited an equine breeding centre in Minas Gerais, Brazil, to show the KX5600v ultrasound scanner to Filipe the vet. As a recently qualified veterinarian on a tight budget, he was interested to see what this cost-effective little machine could do, and we brought him over one of our second-hand models to enable him to be able to afford to equip it with multiple probes if he wanted to.

We started with the convex probe, which Filipe said would be useful for looking for signs of colon torsion in horses with suspected colic. This type of examination has been shown to be both accurate and reproducible, as the ultrasonic appearance of torsion of the colon is marked, with a very noticeable increase in wall thickness and loss of the normal layering pattern. It was impressive to see just how easily Filipe was able to obtain the images he needed with the convex probe.

Colour Doppler, he mentioned, would also enable him to see the loss of venous blood flow in an animal affected by torsion, but it is more of a ‘nice to have’ than necessary for a diagnosis – so we kept the slightly more expensive ScanX Air off the table for now, and focused on the KX5600v to see just how much we could get out of this little machine.

Above: We brought the ScanX Air along just in case, but Filipe was so happy with the KX5600v that we did not need to try a more expensive system.

For tendon scanning, Filipe was delighted with the quality of the linear probe. Having used much more expensive Mindray and Sonoscape systems for this in the past, he said the probe of the Elite 5600 gave much better contact than these more expensive systems, the footprint size is optimal for scanning the leg and ankle, and it is lighter to hold.

Check out the video below to see some of the testing we did with Filipe, and please contact us if you would like us to help you find the right solution for your own needs. No matter where you are in the world, we would love to work with you.