Role of Lung Ultrasound in Weaning of Postoperative Mechanically Ventilated Patients

Abstract

During weaning from mechanical ventilation, many tools could help in prediction of failure the process of weaning. There were gold standard tools as CT chest to assess lung aeration, diaphragmatic fluoroscopy to assess diaphragmatic movement and PICCO to assess extra vascular lung water. These gold standard tools are impractical in clinical situation. In contrast there are easy traditional tools as ABGS, CXR, ventilator parameters and shallow breathing index. These traditional tools have a significantly higher failure rate as compared to gold standard tools. Using the lung US, as an easy bed side tool, in decreasing failure rate of traditional tools is of great interest. Our study was on using lung US as an added bedside tool to traditional tools. We found that adding US examination to lung, as predicting tool to success of weaning from mechanical ventilation in postoperative mechanically ventilated patients, significantly decreased failure rate of weaning from mechanical ventilation