FAST exams are usually the first ultrasound study EM residents learn how to do. It’s a good feeling when you have done a good FAST exam; unfortuntely they have a bit of a wrinkle that adds a step or two when filling out their worksheet in Qpath. We have found that switching transducers in the middle of a study causes a new study to be started in Qpath. If you use a cuvilinear probe for the abdominal views then switch to a phased array for the cardiac window but the linear to look for lung sliding, the software will likely save that as three separate studies.

To fix it, copy and paste the MRN into the “patient ID” line after selecting the edit just as you would always do. Do the same for all three (in this case) studies – this literally takes a matter of seconds. Once all three have the same name, on the home screen (the “exams” screen) select the top study of the three and click the button from the toolbar that says “unsplit.”

That will join them all into one file and you can fill out one worksheet. There is a video below demonstrating this workthrough.

I have found the problem that you will run into is that by default “unsplit” is not one of the icons on your toolbar. I’ve got a video below showing you how to add it to your toolbar.

(You might notice that there is a “merge” icon as well. It feels like this is the button to click to join these images. It’s not. that is for joining two unrelated studies and there is a time for that, but “unsplit” is the answer to this current problem”

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