Role of Chest Ultrasonography in Acute Respiratory Distress

Abstract

Examination of the chest is a rapidly developing application of ultrasound (US) and may be used to evaluate a wide range of peripheral parenchymal, pleural and chest wall diseases. The technique is particularly used to be bedside test in the intensive care unit, where suboptimal radiography may mask or minimize clinically significant abnormalities and where differentiation of pleural from parenchymal changes can be confusing. Chest US can help in rapid management of acute respiratory failure in intensive care units when rapid decisions are needed and especially when patients’ transport is a big difficult. Therefore, it can be considered an attractive complementary diagnostic tool and one of the most promising techniques for the management of critically ill patient with ARF. Acute respiratory failure, which is frequently encountered in ICUs, remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality Furthermore, there are often situations of severe respiratory distress in which an urgent diagnosis is required within minutes to direct potentially life-saving therapy Management of such critically ill patients requires imaging techniques. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the ability of chest ultrasonography in the detection of characteristic pleuropulmonary signs of ALI/ARDS as compared to sonographic signs of APE in patients who are presented with acute dyspnea to respiratory I.C.U at Ain Shams University hospitals and Al Abassia Chest Hospital. From the period between December 2013 to December 2014. The present study was conducted on twenty eight patients (14 males and 15 females) presented to the respiratory ICU by respiratory distress in the respiratory ICU at Ain Shams University hospitals and Al Abassia Chest Hospital between December 2013 to December 2014. In the present study we concerned to demonstrate the importance of ultrasound findings in differentiation between cardiogenic and non-cardiogenic causes of ARF. The ultrasound findings of our concern was the presence of Alveo-linterstitial syndrome by 100% of cases illustrated the importance of chest US in detection of wet lung either in cardiogenic cause or non-cardiogenic causes.