According to currently available data, from 5% to 16% of patients tested positively for COVID-19 required admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) due to respiratory failure and the necessity to introduce mechanical ventilation [1,2]. Respiratory failure is the dominating medical issue in the course of this disease. It is widely acknowledged that computed tomography is the gold standard for diagnosing lung diseases, and it facilitates the visualisation of interstitial inflammatory lesions that are found also in . In such cases chest X-ray is characterised by a significantly lower sensitivity and specificity. However, in numerous reports from China, Italy, and the USA physicians emphasise the efficacy of ultrasound both during the preliminary diagnostic process and then when monitoring disease dynamics in .

Various opioids are added to local anesthetic solutions for spinal anesthesia. This may change the final density of the local anestetic (LA) mixture. This effect regarding current concepts in spinal anesthesia needs to be re-evaluated. In order to re-evaluate such effects, hyperbaric and isobaric local anesthetic (LA) solutions were mixed with opioid adjuvants (A) using the equipment available in the operating room. Ten density measurements for each composition (LA-A) were performed. The density change of 0.0006 g/mL was regarded as significant. Measured densities were also compared with theoretical values calculated using Hare’s. As a result, the addition of an opioid adjuvant caused a significant reduction in the final density of the LA-A solution. In hyperbaric LA mixtures, it did not change the baricity from hyperbaric to isobaric. However, the addition of highly hypobaric fentanyl 0.99360 g/mL (SD ± 0.00004) changes all isobaric LA solutions baricity to hypobaric. The comparison of measured and theoretical densities revealed significant differences (p > 0.05). However, the absolute reduction reached 0.0006 g/mL in only two LA-A compositions. We conclude that the addition of fentanyl to isobaric LA results in a hypobaric solution that may affect the distribution of the block. The inadequacy of LA-A in a clinical setting is unlikely to influence block characteristics.

Dyspnea is a common symptom and leading cause of hospital admissions of geriatric patients. Elderly patients who need hospitalisation, characterized by multiple chronic diseases. The most common causes of dyspnea are deterioration of Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) and pneumonia. Basic diagnostic tools for dyspnea such as a chest X-ray, ECG and laboratory testing (including B-type natriuretic peptide marking) often fail in helping us reach a diagnosis. A transthoracic Lung Ultrasound (LUS) appears to be a helpful, safe and simple diagnostic method.