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Acute muscle loss assessed using panoramic ultrasound in critically ill adults: a prospective observational study

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Abstract

Purpose

Panoramic ultrasound is one of the recently introduced ultrasound evaluation techniques. We herein examined the relationship between the cross-sectional area of the rectus femoris muscle on panoramic ultrasound and its volume based on the gold standard computed tomography (CT) evaluation.

Methods

This was a single-center prospective observational study. A panoramic ultrasound assessment of the cross-sectional area of the rectus femoris muscle and a simple CT evaluation of its volume were performed on days 1 and 7 of hospitalization. Physical functions were assessed at discharge.

Results

Twenty patients were examined. The rate of change in the cross-sectional area of the rectus femoris muscle on panoramic ultrasound correlated with that in its volume on CT (correlation coefficient 0.59, p = 0.0061). In addition, a correlation was observed between the absolute value for the rectus femoris muscle cross-sectional area on panoramic ultrasound and physical functions at discharge. Rectus femoris muscle distances did not correlate with either.

Conclusion

In the acute phase of critical illness, the cross-sectional area of the rectus femoris muscle on panoramic images correlated with its volume on CT and, thus, it is a valid method for assessing muscle mass.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and analyzed during the present study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

There is no funding to declare for this manuscript or the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Hitachi General Hospital, 2-1-1 Jonan-Cho, Hitachi, Ibaraki, 317-0077, Japan

    Daisuke Ikechi, Hidehiko Nakano, Takahiro Fujita, Naho Watanabe, Yasuaki Koyama, Hideki Hashimoto & Kensuke Nakamura

  2. Department of Disaster and Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, Kobe University, Hyogo, Japan

    Nobuto Nakanishi

Authors
  1. Daisuke Ikechi
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  2. Hidehiko Nakano
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  3. Nobuto Nakanishi
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  4. Takahiro Fujita
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  5. Naho Watanabe
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  6. Yasuaki Koyama
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  7. Hideki Hashimoto
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  8. Kensuke Nakamura
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Contributions

DI, KN: conception of the study. DI, NN, KN: interpretation of the study. DI, NN, SS, KN: drafting of the manuscript. DI, HN, TF, NW, YK, HH, KN: conduct of the study. TF, NW: conduct of echography. NN: supervision of the study. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kensuke Nakamura.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no competing interests related to this manuscript or the study.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This clinical study was approved by the Ethics Board of Hitachi General Hospital (2020–130). We received informed consent from participants or their proxies.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

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Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

10396_2024_1412_MOESM1_ESM.tiff

Supplemental Figure 1. Relationship between rectus femoris muscle area on panoramic ultrasound and rectus femoris muscle volume on CT on days 1 and 7. CT: computed tomography (TIFF 183 KB)

10396_2024_1412_MOESM2_ESM.tiff

Supplemental Figure 2. Relationship between the physical function assessment at discharge and rectus femoris cross-sectional area on day 1 or 7. MRC, Medical Research Council; FSS-ICU, functional status score for the intensive care unit (TIFF 659 KB)

Supplementary file3 (DOCX 14 kb)

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Ikechi, D., Nakano, H., Nakanishi, N. et al. Acute muscle loss assessed using panoramic ultrasound in critically ill adults: a prospective observational study. J Med Ultrasonics 51, 355–362 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10396-024-01412-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10396-024-01412-4

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