Lung ultrasounds can help clinicians identify patients with preeclampsia who have developed pulmonary edema.
Lung ultrasounds can detect both pulmonary edema and increased left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) in patients with severe preeclampsia, according to a study published in the journal Anesthesiology.
Researchers from Hopital Nord, in Marseille, France, undertook a prospective cohort study to assess the utility of using lung ultrasound for patients with severe preeclampsia. “Lung ultrasound is fast, safe, noninvasive, and easy to use,” lead author Marc Leone, MD, PhD, vice chair of the department of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the hospital, said in a release. “We found it allowed us to quickly assess whether a woman with preeclampsia had pulmonary edema and confirm the severity of the condition.”
Twenty otherwise healthy adult patients with severe preeclampsia were enrolled in the study. They all underwent lung and cardiac ultrasounds before and after delivery. The researchers determined pulmonary edema using two scores: the B-pattern and the Echo Comet Score. Left ventricular end-diastolic pressures were assessed by transthoracic echocardiography.
The lung ultrasound images showed that five women (25 percent) had pulmonary edema before delivery and cardiac ultrasound found only four (20 percent) had the condition. The lung ultrasound also identified a patient with non-cardiac pulmonary edema, which had not been detected by the cardiac ultrasound.
“The striking finding of this preliminary study was that lung ultrasound detected B-pattern in 25 percent of patients with SP [severe preeclampsia],” wrote the authors. “The incidence was higher than that of clinical edema reported in the literature.”
The authors concluded that although further study is necessary, this preliminary study shows that ultrasound was an easy tool to help detect pulmonary edema and increased LVEDP in patients with severe preeclampsia.
The Reading Room: Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Cancer Screenings, and COVID-19
November 3rd 2020In this podcast episode, Dr. Shalom Kalnicki, from Montefiore and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discusses the disparities minority patients face with cancer screenings and what can be done to increase access during the pandemic.
What New Research Reveals About ChatGPT and Ultrasound Detection of Thyroid Nodules
March 13th 2024In a comparison of image-to-text large language models (LLMs), ChatGPT 4.0 offered a 95 percent sensitivity rate and an 83 percent AUC that were comparable to that of two senior radiologists and one junior radiologist interacting with LLM to differentiate between malignant and benign thyroid nodules on ultrasound.
ECR Study Finds Mixed Results with AI on Breast Ultrasound
March 6th 2024While adjunctive use of AI led to significantly higher specificity and accuracy rates in detecting cancer on breast ultrasound exams in comparison to unassisted reading by breast radiologists, researchers noted that 12 of 13 BI-RADS 3 lesions upgraded by AI were ultimately benign, according to research presented at the European Congress of Radiology.