What is POCLUS ? - Point of Care Lung Ultrasound

Abstract

Lung ultrasonography (LUS) is becoming a bedside point of care technique in critical care. Lung ultrasound recently has seen an explosion of interest in neonatal care and the evidence about its usefulness is constantly growing. And the added advantage is, it is non-invasive, radiation free, bedside and ideal for the extreme low birth weight neonates and can be interpreted by the neonatologist himself with a little training. Neonatal lung diseases often cause confusion for clinicians due to the non-specific nature of respiratory distress in neonates. Lung ultrasound is a new tool for detecting lung diseases in clinical practice and exhibits high sensitivity and specificity. The various lung ultrasound findings and their interpretation in relation to common neonatal lung conditions like transient tachypnea of newborn (TTN), Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), Pneumonia, Pleural effusion and Pneumothorax are discussed. Lung ultrasound provides valuable real-time information, which makes it particularly promising for further applications in NICUs. The usefulness of the new Lung Ultrasound (LUS) score in relation to RDS and decision taking on surfactant administration is being delineated. Lung ultrasound scores can be used to guide early surfactant replacement in extremely preterm neonates with RDS & avoid unnecessary harmful x-rays. However, lung ultrasound should not to be performed in isolation; it should be combined with the clinical findings.