• Resuscitation · Dec 2024

    Visual detection of pulselessness by carotid artery sonography - A prospective observational study among medical students.

    • B Vojnar, A Holl, H C Dinges, T Keller, H Wulf, and C Gaik.
    • Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg, Campus Marburg, Marburg, Germany. Electronic address: vojnar@med.uni-marburg.de.
    • Resuscitation. 2024 Dec 17; 206: 110461110461.

    AimThis cross-sectional study aimed to determine whether medical students with little to no ultrasound experience could correctly distinguish between 'pulsation present' and 'no pulsation present' after a short introductory video on the subject using ultrasound videos of the common carotid artery (CCA).MethodsUltrasound videos (B-mode, M-mode, and Color Doppler) of pulsatile (systolic blood pressure 70-80 mmHg) and non-pulsatile (cardiopulmonary bypass surgery, clamped aorta) CCA were created. These were demonstrated to the medical students for a period of ten seconds - corresponding to the duration of the manual pulse palpation during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). All participants viewed twenty of these videos in random order on a tablet and were asked to decide whether or not a CCA pulse was present.Results432 participants completed the study in full on 20 cases, enabling a total of 8640 decisions on CCA pulse 'present' or 'not present' to be evaluated. M-mode: in 96 % (1244/1296) of the cases, the participants correctly identified the presence of pulsatile CCA. In the videos without pulsatile CCA, the correct decision 'no pulsation present' was made in 95 % (1231/1296) of the cases. B-mode: the decision 'pulsation present' was made correctly in 69 % (889/1296) of the cases, and in the remaining 31 % (407/1296) the option 'no pulsation present' was incorrectly chosen, although a video with CCA pulsation was shown. In contrast, the correct decision 'no pulsation present' was selected in 99 % of the cases (2142/2160). Color Doppler: CCA pulsation was correctly detected in 99.5 % (1290/1296) of the cases. In the videos without CCA pulsation, 99 % (1281/1296) of the videos were correctly evaluated as 'no pulsation present'.ConclusionMedical students seem to be able to detect the absence of a pulse with a high degree of accuracy using 2D ultrasound of the CCA in a controlled study setting, using different ultrasound modes. The results of this study suggest that a combination of Color Doppler and B-mode may be useful when evaluating the CCA during CPR to answer the question 'pulsation present' or 'no pulsation present'.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…