Point-of-Care Ultrasound for COVID-19 Pneumonia Patients in the ICU

BACKGROUND: There is scarce literature on point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) assessment characteristics in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia with hypoxic respiratory failure. METHODS: This study was an observational, prospective, single-center study, including adults suspected to have COVID-19 who were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU). An intensivist in critical care ultrasound performed lung ultrasound (LUS) and echocardiology within 12 hours of patients' admission to the ICU. We calculated the trans mitral E/A ratio, E/e′, left ventricular ejection fraction (EF), inferior vena cava (IVC) diameter, right ventricle (RV) size and systolic function. RESULTS: In the group of patients with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia, echocardiographic findings revealed normal E/e′, deceleration time (DT), and transmittal E/A ratio compared to those in the non-COVID-19 patients (p = 0.001, 0.0001, and 0.0001, respectively). IVC diameter was < 2 cm with > 50% collapsibility in 62 (81%) patients with COVID-19 pneumonia; a diameter of > 2 cm and < 50% collapsibility was detected among those with non-COVID-19 pneumonia (p-value of 0.001). In patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, there were 3 cases of myocarditis (3.9%) with poor EF, severe RV systolic dysfunction was seen in 9 cases (11.6%), and 3 cases exhibited RV thrombus. Lung US revealed 4 signs suggestive of COVID-19 pneumonia in 77 patients (98.6%) (sensitivity 96.9%; confidence interval, 85%–99.5%) when compared with reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction results. CONCLUSIONS: POCUS plays an important role in the bedside diagnosis, hemodynamic assessment and management of patients with acute hypoxic respiratory and circulatory failure with COVID-19 pneumonia.