Critical Care (Dec 2020)

Multi-organ point-of-care ultrasound for COVID-19 (PoCUS4COVID): international expert consensus

  • Arif Hussain,
  • Gabriele Via,
  • Lawrence Melniker,
  • Alberto Goffi,
  • Guido Tavazzi,
  • Luca Neri,
  • Tomas Villen,
  • Richard Hoppmann,
  • Francesco Mojoli,
  • Vicki Noble,
  • Laurent Zieleskiewicz,
  • Pablo Blanco,
  • Irene W. Y. Ma,
  • Mahathar Abd. Wahab,
  • Abdulmohsen Alsaawi,
  • Majid Al Salamah,
  • Martin Balik,
  • Diego Barca,
  • Karim Bendjelid,
  • Belaid Bouhemad,
  • Pablo Bravo-Figueroa,
  • Raoul Breitkreutz,
  • Juan Calderon,
  • Jim Connolly,
  • Roberto Copetti,
  • Francesco Corradi,
  • Anthony J. Dean,
  • André Denault,
  • Deepak Govil,
  • Carmela Graci,
  • Young-Rock Ha,
  • Laura Hurtado,
  • Toru Kameda,
  • Michael Lanspa,
  • Christian B. Laursen,
  • Francis Lee,
  • Rachel Liu,
  • Massimiliano Meineri,
  • Miguel Montorfano,
  • Peiman Nazerian,
  • Bret P. Nelson,
  • Aleksandar N. Neskovic,
  • Ramon Nogue,
  • Adi Osman,
  • José Pazeli,
  • Elmo Pereira-Junior,
  • Tomislav Petrovic,
  • Emanuele Pivetta,
  • Jan Poelaert,
  • Susanna Price,
  • Gregor Prosen,
  • Shalim Rodriguez,
  • Philippe Rola,
  • Colin Royse,
  • Yale Tung Chen,
  • Mike Wells,
  • Adrian Wong,
  • Wang Xiaoting,
  • Wang Zhen,
  • Yaseen Arabi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-03369-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 24, no. 1
pp. 1 – 18

Abstract

Read online

Abstract COVID-19 has caused great devastation in the past year. Multi-organ point-of-care ultrasound (PoCUS) including lung ultrasound (LUS) and focused cardiac ultrasound (FoCUS) as a clinical adjunct has played a significant role in triaging, diagnosis and medical management of COVID-19 patients. The expert panel from 27 countries and 6 continents with considerable experience of direct application of PoCUS on COVID-19 patients presents evidence-based consensus using GRADE methodology for the quality of evidence and an expedited, modified-Delphi process for the strength of expert consensus. The use of ultrasound is suggested in many clinical situations related to respiratory, cardiovascular and thromboembolic aspects of COVID-19, comparing well with other imaging modalities. The limitations due to insufficient data are highlighted as opportunities for future research.

Keywords