The use of acronyms for similar abbreviated ultrasound examinations attempting to answer similar clinical questions in human medicine is somewhat out of control.

For example, focused cardiac examinations have been included in the acronyms of ACES (Abdominal and Cardiac Evaluation with Sonography in Shock), FEEL (Focused Echocardiographic Evaluation in Life Support), and now most recently the most absurd FoCUS (Focused Cardiac Ultrasound) for focused cardiac or focused echocardiography.

The term “FoCUS” was just proposed within the publication entitled the  “International Evidence-based Recommendations for Focused Cardiac Ultrasound” in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography by Via et al. 2014.

Why not just call it Focused Cardiac or Focused Echo (echocardiography) that lacks confusion?  I’m doing a “Focused” exam? How many replies will be doctor are you doing a Focused X or Focused Y or do you mean FoCUS (Foh – Cus) ?

Veterinarians should avoid the onslaught of acronyms in the human literature (BOAST, BEAST, HFAST, EFAST, RUSH, $ Approach to name a few).  Thus, we have proposed (Lisciandro JVECC 2011; Lisciandro JVECC 2012; Boysen and Lisciandro VCNA 2013 and our textbook of which Dr Boysen is a co-author) the following terms:

Abdominal FAST or AFAST®

Thoracic FAST or TFAST®

Vet BLUE® (Brief Lung Ultrasound Exam)

Combo FAST (AFAST® and TFAST®)

Global FAST® (AFAST®, TFAST® and Vet BLUE®)

Focused or COAST (Cageside Focused Assessment with Sonography) exams.  For example:  Focused Liver or COAST Liver; Focused Echo or COAST Echo; Focused Kidney or COAST Kidney.

Use the Triple T or T3 (superscripted) so that these exams are applied for Trauma, Triage and Tracking (Monitoring)

You know exactly what acoustic windows were used during each of these exams.  There is absolute clarity.  We hope you agree!