Basic Applications of Lung Ultrasound in the Critically Ill: 1 – A Bedside Alternative to CT and Other Irradiating Techniques

Abstract

The previous chapters dealt with more or less usual fields. We now go deeper within this vital organ that has been slightly overlooked by the academics, demonstrating that the diagnosis of pleural effusion or alveolar disorders was just an appetizer. If lung ultrasound is a raison d’être of critical ultrasound, the potential of interstitial syndrome is the raison d’être of lung ultrasound. Based on artifact analysis, it changes the approach to the critically ill. The lung was reputed to be inaccessible to ultrasound mainly because of the artifacts, which were qualified as indesirable [ 1, 2]. Therefore, the physician was not ready for making diagnoses based on artifacts. Similarly, when we began to define the field of critical ultrasound, we saw at the thoracic area various kinds of fog, snow, and parasites. We could have chosen to be resigned to this like the whole community but decided to persist. This was a vital organ after all. Little by little, we wondered whether these parasites, sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical, could not be a language? Perhaps it was a simple language that we just did not understand. This initiated a work of observation, assessment, classification, and, above all, of endless submissions.