Lung artefacts and their use

Abstract

IntroductionIn years gone by examination of patients with pulmonary disorders rested essentially on a clinician's bedside physical examination, of auscultation and percussion, complimented with blood gas analysis and X-ray imaging. Lung ultrasound has emerged into this context as a real-time bedside procedure, delivering information relevant to the clinician's differential diagnosis. A large part of sonographic lung examination involves the interpretation of artefacts, thus knowledge of the origin of typical artefacts is important. Although indirect sonographic signs, nonetheless reliable conclusions on the condition of the lung can be inferred. Particularly the of quantity and distribution of B-lines can establish important assessment of the cause and degree of fluid load within the interstitium.All focused ultrasound investigations, including bedside lung ultrasound, allow symptom evaluation considering multiple organ-systems yet with minimal time delay. Such integration of imaging with clinical assessment and treatment is called Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) and should be understood as an extension of the physical examination. POCUS offers a unique but crucial role, integrating clinical and other imaging findings, including cardiac ultrasound (echocardiography), chest radiography, and computed tomography (CT) scans is crucial, which alone may lack the required accuracy.The emergence of differences in approach to lung sonography, technique and nomenclature, provided the AbstractThe science of lung ultrasound has grown tremendously over the last two decades and lung ultrasound has not only entered the mainstream of point of care ultrasound but has become a dominant topic. Understanding lung ultrasound signs and artifacts is critical to being able to correlate findings with actual pathology and normal anatomy and physiology. Investigators have described multiple lung ultrasound artifacts and findings and it is important to understand both the physics and anatomic basis behind them. Additionally, ultrasound machine use and transducer selection can significantly affect results obtained on patient during an examination and the provider must carefully choose the correct settings. This manuscript describes the state of the art in ultrasound artifact recognition and correlation as well as management of ultrasound technology to optimize diagnostic success.Keywords: ultrasound, lung, artifacts, pathology, guidelines [2,[11][12][13][14][15] we discuss the prominent role of the particular artefacts of lung sonography answering differential-diagnostic questions in patients with cardio-pulmonary diseases. Lung artefacts

Relevance of lung ultrasound in the diagnostic algorithm of respiratory diseases in a real‐life setting: A multicentre prospective study

“…LUS proved useful in diagnosing heart failure. In our case study, the finding of B‐profiles with cardiac characteristics (bilateral, bright B‐line, deep in the field of view or the presence of bilateral pleural effusion) showed a statistically significant correlation with a diagnosis of heart failure . Our results indicate that LUS is a highly specific and sensitive procedure for diagnosing heart failure regardless of the presence of lung disease.…”

EchoScopy in scanning abdominal diseases; a prospective single center study

“…Their main diagnoses were compared to investigate the agreement rate as previously described [2]). Artefacts were considered [39][40][41]. The thorax, pleura and lung were not included and results were published elsewhere [4,6,39,42,43].…”

A common misunderstanding in lung ultrasound: the comet tail artefact

“…Of the many artefacts described in the lung ultrasound (LUS) literature [2][3][4][5][6][7][8], the most often talked about and perhaps creating the most confusion amongst practitioners is the comet tail artefact (CTA). CTA is so named primarily due to their appearance on US but it now known that many disparate linear vertical artefacts share this morphology.…”