FIX-IT Overview

Background

Acute scrotal pain is one of most important and common presentations to urology, and assessment can often be difficult. Commonly, this leads to scrotal exploration to establish a diagnosis and ensure a testicular torsion is not ‘missed’. However, this leads to a high number of ‘negative’ explorations.

RESCUE will be one of BURST’s first interventional studies and will determine the diagnostic accuracy and utility of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) for the assessment of testicular torsion in the hands of surgical registrars with the aim of reducing the ‘negative exploration’ rate.

Surgical registrars will be taught in a mentorship fashion to assess scrotal blood flow using doppler POCUS. Subsequently, we will perform a diagnostic test accuracy study to assess the sensitivity and specificity of POCUS in the hands of surgical trainees. Currently, we are in the protocol writing and funding application stage for a pilot study aiming to begin in 2022.