BACKGROUND: In critically ill patients, auscultation might be challenging as dorsal lung fields are difficult to reach in supine-positioned patients, and the environment is often noisy. In recent years, clinicians have started to consider lung ultrasound as a useful diagnostic tool for a variety of pulmonary pathologies, including pulmonary edema. The aim of this study was to compare lung ultrasound and pulmonary auscultation for detecting pulmonary edema in critically ill patients.METHODS: This study was a planned sub-study of the Simple Intensive Care Studies-I, a single-center, prospective observational study. All acutely admitted patients who were 18 years and older with an expected ICU stay of at least 24 h were eligible for inclusion. All patients underwent clinical examination combined with lung ultrasound, conducted by researchers not involved in patient care. Clinical examination included auscultation of the bilateral regions for crepitations and rhonchi. Lung ultrasound was conducted according to the Bedside Lung Ultrasound in Emergency protocol. Pulmonary edema was defined as three or more B lines in at least two (bilateral) scan sites. An agreement was described by using the Cohen κ coefficient, sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, positive predictive value, and overall accuracy. Subgroup analysis were performed in patients who were not mechanically ventilated.RESULTS: The Simple Intensive Care Studies-I cohort included 1075 patients, of whom 926 (86%) were eligible for inclusion in this analysis. Three hundred seven of the 926 patients (33%) fulfilled the criteria for pulmonary edema on lung ultrasound. In 156 (51%) of these patients, auscultation was normal. A total of 302 patients (32%) had audible crepitations or rhonchi upon auscultation. From 130 patients with crepitations, 86 patients (66%) had pulmonary edema on lung ultrasound, and from 209 patients with rhonchi, 96 patients (46%) had pulmonary edema on lung ultrasound. The agreement between auscultation findings and lung ultrasound diagnosis was poor (κ statistic 0.25). Subgroup analysis showed that the diagnostic accuracy of auscultation was better in non-ventilated than in ventilated patients.CONCLUSION: The agreement between lung ultrasound and auscultation is poor.TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02912624. Registered on September 23, 2016.
In patients with extensive burns several causes may underliehypoxic respiratory failure and bilateral infiltrates on the chestX-ray in the first week afterburn: cardiogenic pulmonaryedema as a result of congestive heart failure, pneumonia and/or adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In particular, itis a challenge to differentiate between ARDS and cardiogenicpulmonary edema in these patients because on the one handthe incidence of ARDS in burn shock appears higher thananticipated, whereas on the other hand there is an increasedrisk for cardiogenic pulmonary edema to develop as intensivefluid resuscitation is mandatory, while myocardial function isdepressed as noted by Baxter et al.[1]. Since these twodiagnoses have very different treatment options, it is impor-tant to be able to differentiate between them as soon as
Background: Ventilation with lower positive end–expiratory pressure (PEEP) may cause loss of lung aeration in critically ill invasively ventilated patients. This study investigated whether a systematic lung ultrasound (LUS) scoring system can detect such changes in lung aeration in a study comparing lower versus higher PEEP in invasively ventilated patients without acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Methods: Single center substudy of a national, multicenter, randomized clinical trial comparing lower versus higher PEEP ventilation strategy. Fifty–seven patients underwent a systematic 12–region LUS examination within 12 h and between 24 to 48 h after start of invasive ventilation, according to randomization. The primary endpoint was a change in the global LUS aeration score, where a higher value indicates a greater impairment in lung aeration. Results: Thirty–three and twenty–four patients received ventilation with lower PEEP (median PEEP 1 (0–5) cm H2O) or higher PEEP (median PEEP 8 (8–8) cm H2O), respectively. Median global LUS aeration scores within 12 h and between 24 and 48 h were 8 (4 to 14) and 9 (4 to 12) (difference 1 (–2 to 3)) in the lower PEEP group, and 7 (2–11) and 6 (1–12) (difference 0 (–2 to 3)) in the higher PEEP group. Neither differences in changes over time nor differences in absolute scores reached statistical significance. Conclusions: In this substudy of a randomized clinical trial comparing lower PEEP versus higher PEEP in patients without ARDS, LUS was unable to detect changes in lung aeration.
