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About this site.
Neuraxiom.com is an effort of Neuraxiom LLC, a Washington Company.
My name is Jack Vander Beek and I am an RN working with a group of anesthesiologists in Olympia Washington.
We have been working with ultrasound for some years starting with locating vascular structures, mostly internal jugular catheter placement for our open heart program. I was interested in finding other uses for this technology to address other problem areas of anesthesia. I began by working on finding techniques for using ultrasound to visualize the epidural space a little over 4 years ago. The epidural project is ongoing and occupies 1 part of the neuraxiom site. During the work on that we learned more about the work being done in ultrasound in regional blocks. The interest here was immediate and we started mapping anatomy in selected block areas to get an understanding of what we were seeing. Gradually, ultrasound was introduced into the block techniques, first following along as the block is performed with a nerve stimulator technique, then leading the needle placement and verifying with the nerve stimulator, and eventually the nerve stimulator is left out of the picture when the ultrasound control is strong enough. Since I was in a position to attend and assist with most of the nerve blocks I could provide continuity in development of techniques and accumulate data based on the diverse block experiences of the 20 or so anesthesiologists I work with.
At our hospital, there was some concern that the femoral/sciatic blocks given to total knee patients were lasting too long and many patients were still profoundly motor blocked the day after surgery and thus unable to participate in PT. There was concern that prolonged blocks were delaying recovery and discharge of patients. I was asked to follow these blocks and determine the reality of the whole situation and see if something needed to be done. I set up a study and created a website to pass the information to the anesthesiologists. I gradually began adding links to interesting articles and passing along other miscellaneous info to them. One thing lead to another and as the ultrasound project moved along the website seemed like an ideal place to link information and post developments to keep everyone up to speed. I've consolidated things into the neuraxiom site and moved ultrasound to the foreground of it.
I hope you find this site useful and please contact me if you have any suggestions to improve the neuraxiom website.
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