GE HealthCare has welcomed a new addition to its line of handheld ultrasound devices: the Vscan Air SL, featuring a dual-probe design for quickly assessing heart and blood vessel issues at the point of care.
The company hopes that clinicians will carry around the pocket-sized, wireless scanner and use it as needed, instead of relying on wheeled ultrasound carts, with a special focus on emergency situations that may require a fast diagnosis.
The cardiovascular disease-focused SL, with its sector-phased array transducer, joins the Vscan Air CL—introduced in 2021 and equipped with a curved array designed for easier abdominal and obstetric imaging—as well as the Vscan Extend, with its connected handheld screen. Both the SL and CL also employ a linear array on the device’s opposite side to help take pictures of the lungs, skeletal system and more.
The Vscan line first made its debut in 2010; according to GE HealthCare, more than 50,000 Vscan systems have since been used to help care for about 100 million patients worldwide.
The Vscan Air SL is already commercially available in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The company said the device has now been cleared by the FDA, and it expects to begin U.S. shipments this quarter.
Sharing the stage with the Vscan Air SL, with announcements timed for the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology in Amsterdam, GE HealthCare also launched CardioVisio for Atrial Fibrillation, a digital clinical decision support tool.
The program culls data from multiple sources and afib guidelines to help model disease progression and make therapy recommendations. With afib being the most common arrhythmia, GE HealthCare estimates that nearly 16 million people could receive a diagnosis in the U.S. by 2050, as well as nearly 18 million in Europe by 2060. At the same time, afib is often misdiagnosed, with up to 30% of cases missed in clinical practice, the company said.