Covid-19 Special Collection
A Review of Early Experience in Lung Ultrasound in the Diagnosis and Management of COVID-19
A novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was identified as the cause of a cluster of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019. Since then more than eight million confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported around the globe. The current gold standard for etiologic diagnosis is reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction analysis of respiratory-tract specimens, but the test has a high false-negative rate owing to both nasopharyngeal swab sampling error and viral burden.Lung Ultrasound in Patients with Acute Respiratory Failure Reduces Conventional Imaging and Health Care Provider Exposure to COVID-19
Lung ultrasound gained a leading position in the last year as an imaging technique for the assessment and management of patients with acute respiratory failure. In coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), its role may be of further importance because it is performed bedside and may limit chest X-ray and the need for transport to radiology for computed tomography (CT) scan. Since February 21, we progressively turned into a coronavirus-dedicated intensive care unit and applied an ultrasound-based approach to avoid traditional imaging and limit contamination as much as possible.
