Point-of-Care Ultrasound
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ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY (JM GARDIN AND AH WALLER, SECTION EDITORS)
Point-of-Care Ultrasound Linda Lee 1 & Jeanne M. DeCara 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Purpose of the Review Point-of-care ultrasound using small ultrasound devices has expanded beyond emergency and critical care medicine to many other subspecialties. Awareness of the strengths and limitations of the technology and knowledge of the appropriate settings and common indications for point-of-care ultrasound is important. Recent Findings Point-of-care ultrasound is widely embraced as an extension of the physical exam and is employed in acute care and medical education settings. Echocardiography laboratories involved in education must individualize training to the intended scope of practice of the user. Advances in artificial intelligence may assist in image acquisition and interpretation by novice users. Summary Point-of-care ultrasound is widely available in a variety of clinical settings. The field has advanced substantially in the past 2 decades and will likely continue to expand with advancement in technology, reduced cost, and improved opportunities to assist new users. Keywords POCUS . Cardiac . Ultrasound . Echocardiography . Education . Training
Introduction From laptops to tablets to telephones, there has been increasing interest in the miniaturization of technology over the past several decades. The same can also be said of ultrasound technology. Health care providers can now perform point-of-care ultrasound, known as POCUS, at the bedside using handheld machines of varying sizes that are considerably more portable than traditional full platform systems (Fig. 1). POCUS use has been widely embraced by emergency medicine (EM) providers and has additionally permeated an array of other specialties such as critical care (CC), trauma, vascular medicine, obstetrics, and rheumatology. POCUS has made relatively low-cost technology available in resource-limited settings globally [1–4]. Most recently, POCUS has been heavily utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic [5, 6].
Although POCUS is used to examine many organ systems, in this article we primarily review the use of POCUS for cardiac indications. We acknowledge that another moniker for cardiac POCUS is focused cardiac ultrasound (FCU) and consider both of these terms interchangeable. Throughout this piece, the focus is on utilization of small ultrasound devices at the bedside as an extension of the clinical assessment or for the purpose of rapid triage of a narrow list of indications pertinent to a particular clinical setting. In some cases, cardiovascular providers fully trained in echocardiography may also use small devices in this capacity, and conversely, noncardiovascular providers can use full platform systems in a focused way. In both scenarios, this would be considered a cardiac POCUS examination.
Origins of POCUS and Current State of the Technology This article is part of the Topical Collection on Echocardiography * Jeanne M. DeCara jdecara@medici
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