Med Student's Ultrasound Demo Has a Surprise Benefit

The scan was supposed to be a routine classroom demo. Instead, it flagged a medical crisis that the patient-to-be never saw coming. Four weeks into her first year at Hofstra/Northwell's medical school on Long Island, 22-year-old Aria Moreno volunteered to be the subject for an in-class ultrasound lesson on the digestive system, per the Washington Post. As the device passed over her abdomen, instructor and radiology resident Amanda Aguilo-Cuadra noticed ominous dark areas near Moreno's right kidney that looked like fluid backing up behind a blockage. "I thought, OK, this looks very abnormal," Aguilo-Cuadra tells WABC.

Per school protocol, she said nothing in front of the other students, then pulled Moreno aside afterward and urged her to see a urologist, per the Post. Tests revealed a massive kidney stone: 4 centimeters across, roughly the width of a Ping-Pong ball and about 10 times the size that patients can sometimes pass on their own. Moreno had experienced no pain, urinary problems, or other warning signs. Surgeons removed the stone in October, but the prolonged obstruction left her right kidney working at only about half its capacity, with uncertain prospects for recovery. Without the chance discovery, the obstruction might have silently destroyed the entire kidney, says David Battinelli, dean of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine.

The school regularly uses student volunteers for ultrasound training, and previous sessions have revealed issues such as gallstones and thyroid nodules, according to program co-founder John Pellerito. Instructors are told to protect students' privacy, including while arranging follow-up care, which Aguilo-Cuadra did, discreetly having a classmate scan Moreno's other kidney under the pretext of viewing her spleen. Moreno missed two weeks of class for surgery but says she's now back to her normal routine of studying, exercising, and dancing, and she now jokes that she can "tell you anything about a kidney." She's now a firm believer in offering to be a subject for such demos. "I saved an organ essentially by volunteering that day," she tells NBC New York.