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Review
. 2020 Oct;30(Suppl 2):S6-S10.
doi: 10.4103/jcecho.jcecho_50_20. Epub 2020 Oct 27.

Lung Ultrasound in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Vito Cianci  1 , Mirko Zanatta  2
Affiliations
Review

Lung Ultrasound in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Vito Cianci et al. J Cardiovasc Echogr. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Lung ultrasound (LUS) is one of the most important and innovative applications in emergency and critical care medicine for the management of critically ill patients. Ultrasound has been widely used in the COVID-19 pandemic as an extremely reliable technique and has proved to have a key role in the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with acute respiratory failure. The diagnostic accuracy of LUS is higher than chest X-ray and similar to computed tomography, which is considered the gold standard. COVID-19 pneumonia has some distinctive ultrasonographic signs but not pathognomonic, and LUS significantly improves the management of COVID-19 patients speeding up the diagnostic path. The examination is bedside; reduces the risk of contamination, avoiding mobilization of the patients; cuts down the amount of radioactive exposure; and gives real-time answers to many diagnostic and therapeutic doubts. Finally, the instruments are small and the scanner and the probes can be protected from contamination easily.

Keywords: COVID-19; lung ultrasound; pandemic; pneumonia.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The 12-regions technique in patients with suspected COVID-19 pneumonia
Figure 2
Figure 2
Lung ultrasound sequence in the 12-regions technique
Figure 3
Figure 3
Confluent B-lines in COVID-19 pneumonia
Figure 4
Figure 4
The “light beam” effect
Figure 5
Figure 5
Irregular pleural line in COVID-19 interstitial syndrome
Figure 6
Figure 6
Interstitial syndrome with multiple B-lines, irregular pleural line, and subpleural mini-consolidations
Figure 7
Figure 7
Subpleural consolidation with an interrupted pleural line
Figure 8
Figure 8
Subpleural consolidation with air bronchograms
Figure 9
Figure 9
Thickened and irregular pleural line with small subpleural consolidation
Figure 10
Figure 10
Small pleural fluid collection
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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