Critical ultrasound journal
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Unrecognized esophageal intubations are associated with significant patient morbidity and mortality. No single confirmatory device has been shown to be 100 % accurate at ruling out esophageal intubations in the emergency department. Recent studies have demonstrated that point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) may be a useful adjunct for confirming endotracheal tube placement; however, the amount of practice required to become proficient at this technique is unclear. The purpose of this study is to determine the amount of practice required by emergency physicians to become proficient at interpreting ultrasound video clips of esophageal and endotracheal intubations. ⋯ After a brief online tutorial and only two practice attempts, emergency physicians were able to quickly and accurately interpret ultrasound intubation clips of esophageal and endotracheal intubations.
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Three Doppler-derived techniques have been proposed to assess renal perfusion at bedside: Doppler-based renal resistive index (RI) which has been extensively but imperfectly studied in assessing renal allograft status and changes in renal perfusion in critically ill patients and for predicting the reversibility of an acute kidney injury (AKI), semi-quantitative evaluation of renal perfusion using colour-Doppler which may be easier to perform and may give similar information than RI and contrast-enhanced sonography that may allow more precise renal and cortical perfusion assessment. These promising tools have several obvious advantages including their feasibility, non-invasiveness, repeatability and potential interest in assessing renal function or perfusion. However, several limits need to be taken into account with these techniques, and promising results remain associated with large areas of uncertainty. This editorial will describe more carefully advantages and limits of these techniques and will discuss their potential interest in assessing renal perfusion.