• Daniel Talmor and Achikam Oren-Grinberg.
• 1Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. 2Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Intermountain Medical Center and University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Crit. Care Med.. 2013 Nov 1;41(11):2618-26.

ObjectivePortable ultrasound is now used routinely in many ICUs for various clinical applications. Echocardiography performed by noncardiologists, both transesophageal and transthoracic, has evolved to broad applications in diagnosis, monitoring, and management of critically ill patients. This review provides a current update on focused critical care echocardiography for the management of critically ill patients.MethodSource data were obtained from a PubMed search of the medical literature, including the PubMed "related articles" search methodology.Summary And ConclusionsAlthough studies demonstrating improved clinical outcomes for critically ill patients managed by focused critical care echocardiography are generally lacking, there is evidence to suggest that some intermediate outcomes are improved. Furthermore, noncardiologists can learn focused critical care echocardiography and adequately interpret the information obtained. Noncardiologists can also successfully incorporate focused critical care echocardiography into advanced cardiopulmonary life support. Formal training and proctoring are important for safe application of focused critical care echocardiography in clinical practice. Further outcomes-based research is urgently needed to evaluate the efficacy of focused critical care echocardiography.

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