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. 2020;2(11):2381-2386.
doi: 10.1007/s42399-020-00516-5. Epub 2020 Sep 15.

Trans-thoracic Echocardiography in Prone Positioning COVID-19 Patients: a Small Case Series

Enrico Giustiniano  1 , Fabio Fazzari  2 , Renato Maria Bragato  2 , Mirko Curzi  2 , Maurizio Cecconi  1   3
Affiliations

Trans-thoracic Echocardiography in Prone Positioning COVID-19 Patients: a Small Case Series

Enrico Giustiniano et al. SN Compr Clin Med. 2020.

Abstract

During SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, several subjects were treated in our intensive care unit (ICU) because of acute respiratory failure following COVID-19 pneumonia. Most of them required mechanical ventilation and someone in prone position (PP) too, because of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). During PP, trans-esophageal echocardiography (TEE) is not always easy, mainly due to the forced position of the neck of the patient. Moreover, during a pandemic, given the great number of patients needing treatment, TEE probes and monitoring devices are not widely available. Then, trans-thoracic echocardiography (TTE) plays a crucial role as it is non-invasive, repeatable, and available every time it is needed. Moreover, it can be safely performed also in prone position (TTEp). According to in-hospital protocol, TTEp was performed using the apical-four-chamber (A-4-C) view in 8 patients. We temporarily deflated the lower thoracic section of the air-mattress to place the probe between the mattress surface and the thorax of the patient. We collected both TEE and hemodynamics data. The main result of our retrospective analysis is that TTE can be performed in patients in prone positioning and is reliable and repeatable; the single apical-four-chamber view provides sufficient data to evaluate the cardiac performance in case of scarce availability of hemodynamic monitoring devices, like in a pandemic setting. TTE may be a helpful tool for cardiac performance evaluation and diagnosis not only in supine or anterolateral positioning like in echocardiographic lab, but also in subjects admitted to ICU due to ARDS needing of mechanical ventilation in prone positioning.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Echocardiography; Respiratory failure.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
TTEp technique and the A-4-C view
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
One case COVID-19 example of diameter ventricle ratio in supine and prone positioning echocardiography. a Echocardiography in supine positioning. b Echocardiography in prone positioning
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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