• Marco Di Serafino, Maria Notaro, Gaetano Rea, Francesca Iacobellis, Venere Delli Paoli, Ciro Acampora, Stefania Ianniello, Luca Brunese, Luigia Romano, and Gianfranco Vallone.
• Department of General and Emergency Radiology, "Antonio Cardarelli" Hospital, Naples, Italy. marco.diserafino@aocardarelli.it.
• Radiol Med. 2020 Aug 1; 125 (8): 738-753.

AbstractUltrasound is the most disruptive innovation in intensive care life, above all in this time, with a high diagnostic value when applied appropriately. In recent years, point-of-care lung ultrasound has gained significant popularity as a diagnostic tool in the acutely dyspnoeic patients. In the era of Sars-CoV-2 outbreak, lung ultrasound seems to be strongly adapting to the follow-up for lung involvement of patients with ascertaining infections, till to be used, in our opinion emblematically, as a screening test in suspected patients at the emergency triage or at home medical visit. In this brief review, we discuss the lung ultrasound dichotomy, certainties and uncertainties, describing its potential role in validated clinical contexts, as a clinical-dependent exam, its limits and pitfalls in a generic and off-label clinical context, as a virtual anatomical-dependent exam, and its effects on the clinical management of patients with COVID-19.

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