What is it about?

A novel technique based on lung ultrasound to assess the shape of lung water though lung comets. The lung comets allow to detect the presence and quantification of extravascular lung water, a parameter of paramount diagnostic and therapeutic relevance in heart failure patients

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Why is it important?

Clinical cardiologists have always known that extravascular lung water is a key parameter for tailoring prognosis and therapy in heart failure, but until now the available techniques were insensitive, or invasive or cumbersome. Lung ultrasound is simple to learn, to teach and to use, and only requires basic ultrasound pocket size technology: it is the kindergarten of cardiovascular ultrasound .

Perspectives

Rarely, in cardiac imaging, we have so much diagnostic gain with so little technological, training, and time pain. Lung ultrasound can quantify lung oedema noninvasively in real time, even at an early subclinical stage, with user-friendly, low cost, radiation-free, and direct imaging of extravascular lung water

MD Eugenio Picano
National Research Council Italy

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Ultrasound of extravascular lung water: a new standard for pulmonary congestion, European Heart Journal, May 2016, European Society of Cardiology,
DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehw164.
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