Hand-held echocardiography used by intensivist can improve the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosis during emergency consultation in general ward: a cohort study / 中华急诊医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the accuracy and efficiency of hand-held echocardiography (VSCAN) used by intensivist for the diagnosis and treatment decisions in emergency consultation for patients getting worse at risk of life-threatening setting in non-ICU ward.Methods A prospective study in acutely deteriorated patients needed the intensivist for emergency consultation in general wards was carried out.The consultation process was executed as follows(1) The intensivist established an initial diagnosis based on medical history,physical examination and laboratory findings,and assessed the hemodynamics and the cause of acute respiratory failure and cardiac arrest according the documented information.The data recorded as control group (Pre-VSCAN) for comparison with the later available data in subsequent analysis.(2) Problem-based ultrasound examination was performed with VSCAN.For patients suffered cardiac arrest,the FEEL protocol was used to find the potential cause of cardiac arrest such as pericardial tamponade and massive pulmonary embolism screened.For the other patients,a simplified eFATE or BLUE-plus protocols were used based on clinical requirement.With the findings of ultrasound examination the intensivist established an final diagnosis and identified the hemodynamics and the lung pathologies.The consultation advice was then provided to the attending doctors of the patient.The intensivist kept the records of echo results,final diagnosis and consultation advice as data of study group data (Post-VSCAN).The response of the treatment and outcome were followed up.Two attending ICU doctors analyzed these data and judged the correctness of Pre-VSCAN and Post-VSCAN based on the response to treatment and the outcome.Results Ninety patients were finally included in statistical analysis.Sixteen (17.8％) cases,40 (44.4％) cases,29 (32.2％) cases and 5 (5.6％) were consulted for acute circulation dysfunction,acute respiratory failure,both reasons and cardiac arrest,respectively.Compared to pre-VSCAN,VSCAN verification can significantly improve the accuracy of the diagnosis (81.1％ vs.58.9％,P =0.001),assessment of hemodynamics (78.3％ vs.52.2％,P =0.009) and can find more accurate judgment of acute respiratory failure (71.0％ vs.43.5％,P =0.001).Conclusion The hand-held echocardiography used by intensivist is valuable for the diagnosis and the assessment of cardiopulmonary status in case of request for emergency consultation in general wards.