Obtaining arterial vascular access is considered one of the vital components of patient care especially in patients with expected hemodynamic disturbances or large fluid shifts[1, 3, 8]. Because of its superficial location and the presence of alternative collaterals, it has been routine practice to choose the radial artery as a first choice for arterial cannulation [5, 9].
To date, 2 main techniques are routinely used for radial arterial catheterization or puncture[4, 7, 10]. The traditional blind technique relies on external landmarks and uses pulse palpation as guidance for radial artery catheterization. However, the palpation technique has been associated with a low rate of first-attempt success [10]. The Second technique utilizes ultrasound guidance for arterial cannulation, and when compared with traditional palpation, it showed significant improvements the rate of first-attempt success in both adults and pediatric patients. This advance in success rate pushed most practitioners to consider US guidance as a standard approach in most clinical settings necessitating arterial cannulation, especially in patients without palpable radial artery, coagulopathy, hypotension, or when the radial artery is the only site available [7, 9, 11] .…show more content… The terminology short and long refers to the probe axis along the structures visualized on the ultrasound screen. Each view has its strengths and weaknesses. The short axis view allows a broad image of the lateral surrounding tissue and structures, making co-localization of the needle to vessel much easier. However, it is difficult to keep the needle tip within the plane of the ultrasound beam, and frequent adjustments (fanning) of the probe are needed to maintain needle visibility [2, 6, 7, 9,
