• Andrew F Miller, Piyawat Arichai, Cynthia A Gravel, Rebecca L Vieira, Jeffrey T Neal, Mark I Neuman, Michael C Monuteaux, and Jason A Levy.
• From the Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA.
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2022 Jan 1; 38 (1): e300e305e300-e305.

ObjectivesWe sought to describe the test characteristics of cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) performed by pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) physicians after structured cardiac POCUS training.MethodsWe evaluated the use of clinically indicated cardiac POCUS by PEM physicians in a single tertiary care pediatric emergency department after implementation of a focused cardiac POCUS training curriculum. The test characteristics of the sonologist interpretation were compared with expert POCUS review, by PEM physicians who have completed PEM POCUS fellowship training, for the assessment of both pericardial effusion and left ventricular systolic dysfunction.ResultsA total of 1241 cardiac POCUS examinations were performed between July 2015 and December 2017, of which 456 were clinically indicated and underwent expert POCUS review and comprised the study sample. These examinations were performed by 33 different PEM attending sonologists. Chest pain (52%), dyspnea (20%), and tachycardia (18%) were the most common indications for cardiac POCUS. Prevalence of pericardial effusion and global systolic dysfunction based on expert POCUS review were 11% (48/443) and 4% (16/435), respectively. Real-time cardiac POCUS interpretation had a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 99.5%, respectively, for both pericardial effusion and left ventricular systolic dysfunction when compared with expert POCUS review.ConclusionsCardiac POCUS is both sensitive and specific for identifying pericardial effusion and left ventricular systolic dysfunction when performed by PEM attendings with focused training.Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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