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Who is a Cardiac Sonographer?
Many Radiologic Technologists are still confuse if echocardiography is under our field. So in order to give you an idea let me discuss an overview of echocardiography.
According to Wikipedia:
Cardiac sonographer (also known as echocardiographer, or cardiac ultrasound technologist) is a medical profession of sonographers that specialize in the anatomy and function of the heart. It is a technical job that in the USA has traditionally required an Associates degree in Echo and passing a National Registry exam, but more and more often is requiring a Bachelors degree as the field gets more developed and complicated. Much like how a general sonographer would use sonography (ultrasound) to view a fetus inside a pregnant woman, cardiac sonographers use the same technology to examine and evaluate the heart: chamber sizes, arrangement of the parts, muscle function, valve function and blood flow. Cardiac sonographers typically do not make diagnoses, but rather report all that they find to a cardiologist for further analysis. Salaries range from $20 to $50 an hour.
In the US, there are cardiac sonography schools or diagnostic medical sonography schools that offers cardiac sonographer training. Career opportunities will expand in sonography due to advances in echocardiography that can reduce the need for more costly and invasive procedures.
So in conclusion, I think Cardiac Sonography must really be a work of a Radiologic Technologist in partnership with the Cardiologist, right?
June 11th, 2009 at 15:10
Yes, since sonography (general) and echocardiography both uses soundwaves in producing images, echocardiography should be a part of our curriculum. I met lot of echocardiographers here in the philippines who are registered radiologic technologists and im one of them. It would be easier to understand the procedure and parameters if an echocardiographer has a background in general ultrasonography coz they share almost the same application.
August 9th, 2009 at 06:41
Hello. I got my A.S. Rad Technology this past fall. I am in South Carolina, USA. They treat ultrasound here as being completely separate from rad tech field. I don’t think one has to be an R.T. to be a sonographer here. I wanted to be a sonographer and thought I had to be an R.T first and was told no, that that is a completely different area, since they don’t use radiation. I wasn’t told this until I had already started the rad tech program. There are no ultrasound schools close to where I live. The local hospital does not cross-train for anything. Do you have any suggestions of what I could do to train, or would I have to take another entire school program?
August 9th, 2009 at 10:31
ultrasound still uses radiation, it is a non-ionizing type of radiation. Sorry, I am not familiar with their system their in Carolina. Here in the Philippines, BS RadTech encompasses ultrasound subjects and training, so if we go abroad, we can work immediately as ultrasound technologists.
I suggest, you inquire in your school if ultrasound is one of your subjects.
November 12th, 2009 at 15:23
I work all over the country as well as in the U.K. and have worked with many people from the Philippines. There are many language barriers which is hard to believe when the Philippines is supposedly the 3rd nation where English is mostly spoken. We have had accidents in xray because Technologist from the Philippines only know digital equipment they do not know manual technique therefore causing children and others to receive repeated radiation exposure. The overflow of higher trained Technologist in the U.S. is fading out OFW’s. Technologist here are now being trained as Super-Techs which originally started at University Hospitals. Thousands of Filipinos are in Florida and California and Texas because the government did not recognize that we already had too many. Tenet facilities all over the country falsely requested the need for OFW’s but now Obama knows and the U.S. Government will be forced to start their deportation due to the mind blowing increase in unemployment highly trained Technologist from the U.S. whom paid a great deal more money for their education(having to payback loans) and support their families. Ex; U.S. technologist are R.T.(R)(MR)(CT) which they must do in order to get a job. The best thing for anyone in the Philippines is to get into nursing so they can work with others and not alone. There have been severe accidents in MRI and CT in the past few years that will NOW require the U.S. to recognize that we are talking about ionizing radiation and no-ionization radiation killing people, we can no longer ignore the dangers or the deaths…cant see it, cant smell it, cant taste it, yet it is there.