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Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study

Lung transthoracic ultrasound (LUS) is an accessible and widely applicable method of rapidly imaging certain pathologies in the thorax. LUS proves to be an optimal tool in respiratory emergency medicine, applicable in various clinical settings. However, despite the rapid development of bedside ultra...

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Autores principales: Kowalczyk, Damian, Turkowiak, Miłosz, Piotrowski, Wojciech Jerzy, Rosiak, Oskar, Białas, Adam Jerzy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10670426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37998549
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13223412
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author Kowalczyk, Damian
Turkowiak, Miłosz
Piotrowski, Wojciech Jerzy
Rosiak, Oskar
Białas, Adam Jerzy
author_facet Kowalczyk, Damian
Turkowiak, Miłosz
Piotrowski, Wojciech Jerzy
Rosiak, Oskar
Białas, Adam Jerzy
author_sort Kowalczyk, Damian
collection PubMed
description Lung transthoracic ultrasound (LUS) is an accessible and widely applicable method of rapidly imaging certain pathologies in the thorax. LUS proves to be an optimal tool in respiratory emergency medicine, applicable in various clinical settings. However, despite the rapid development of bedside ultrasonography, or point-of-care (POCUS) ultrasound, there remains a scarcity of knowledge about the use of LUS in pre-hospital settings. Therefore, our aim was to assess the usefulness of LUS as an additional tool in diagnosing dyspnea when performed by experienced paramedics in real-life, pre-hospital settings. Participants were recruited consecutively among patients who called for an emergency due to dyspnea in the Warsaw region of Poland. All the enrolled patients were admitted to the Emergency Department (ED). In the prehospital setting, a paramedic experienced in LUS conducted an ultrasonographic examination of the thorax, including Bedside Lung Ultrasound in Emergency (BLUE) and extended Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (eFAST) protocols. The paramedic’s diagnosis was compared to the ED diagnosis, and if available, to the final diagnosis established on the day of discharge from the hospital. We enrolled 44 patients in the study, comprising 22 (50%) men and (50%) women with a median age of 76 (IQR: 69.75–84.5) years. The LUS performed by paramedic was concordant with the discharge diagnosis in 90.91% of cases, where the final diagnosis was established on the day of discharge from the hospital. In cases where the patient was treated only in the ED, the pre-hospital LUS was concordant with the ED diagnosis in 88.64% of cases. The mean time of the LUS examination was 63.66 s (SD: 19.22). The inter-rater agreement between the pre-hospital diagnosis and ER diagnosis based on pre-hospital LUS and complete ER evaluation was estimated at k = 0.822 (SE: 0.07; 95%CI: 0.68, 0.96), indicating strong agreement, and between the pre-hospital diagnosis based on LUS and final discharge diagnosis, it was estimated at k = 0.934 (SE: 0.03; 95%CI: 0.88, 0.99), indicating almost perfect agreement. In conclusion, paramedic-acquired LUS seems to be a useful tool in the pre-hospital differential diagnosis of dyspnea in adults.
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spelling pubmed-106704262023-11-09 Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study Kowalczyk, Damian Turkowiak, Miłosz Piotrowski, Wojciech Jerzy Rosiak, Oskar Białas, Adam Jerzy Diagnostics (Basel) Article Lung transthoracic ultrasound (LUS) is an accessible and widely applicable method of rapidly imaging certain pathologies in the thorax. LUS proves to be an optimal tool in respiratory emergency medicine, applicable in various clinical settings. However, despite the rapid development of bedside ultrasonography, or point-of-care (POCUS) ultrasound, there remains a scarcity of knowledge about the use of LUS in pre-hospital settings. Therefore, our aim was to assess the usefulness of LUS as an additional tool in diagnosing dyspnea when performed by experienced paramedics in real-life, pre-hospital settings. Participants were recruited consecutively among patients who called for an emergency due to dyspnea in the Warsaw region of Poland. All the enrolled patients were admitted to the Emergency Department (ED). In the prehospital setting, a paramedic experienced in LUS conducted an ultrasonographic examination of the thorax, including Bedside Lung Ultrasound in Emergency (BLUE) and extended Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (eFAST) protocols. The paramedic’s diagnosis was compared to the ED diagnosis, and if available, to the final diagnosis established on the day of discharge from the hospital. We enrolled 44 patients in the study, comprising 22 (50%) men and (50%) women with a median age of 76 (IQR: 69.75–84.5) years. The LUS performed by paramedic was concordant with the discharge diagnosis in 90.91% of cases, where the final diagnosis was established on the day of discharge from the hospital. In cases where the patient was treated only in the ED, the pre-hospital LUS was concordant with the ED diagnosis in 88.64% of cases. The mean time of the LUS examination was 63.66 s (SD: 19.22). The inter-rater agreement between the pre-hospital diagnosis and ER diagnosis based on pre-hospital LUS and complete ER evaluation was estimated at k = 0.822 (SE: 0.07; 95%CI: 0.68, 0.96), indicating strong agreement, and between the pre-hospital diagnosis based on LUS and final discharge diagnosis, it was estimated at k = 0.934 (SE: 0.03; 95%CI: 0.88, 0.99), indicating almost perfect agreement. In conclusion, paramedic-acquired LUS seems to be a useful tool in the pre-hospital differential diagnosis of dyspnea in adults. MDPI 2023-11-09 /pmc/articles/PMC10670426/ /pubmed/37998549 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13223412 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Kowalczyk, Damian
Turkowiak, Miłosz
Piotrowski, Wojciech Jerzy
Rosiak, Oskar
Białas, Adam Jerzy
Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title_full Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title_fullStr Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title_full_unstemmed Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title_short Ultrasound on the Frontlines: Empowering Paramedics with Lung Ultrasound for Dyspnea Diagnosis in Adults—A Pilot Study
title_sort ultrasound on the frontlines: empowering paramedics with lung ultrasound for dyspnea diagnosis in adults—a pilot study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10670426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37998549
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics13223412
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