Thank you

This live web event has ended. Thank you for attending.

Description

Patients with acute brain pathology (i.e., acute ischemic stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, status epilepticus, and traumatic brain injury) as well as neuromuscular emergencies (i.e., myasthenic crisis and demyelinating polyneuropathy) can have concomitant respiratory failure as part of their initial presentation or as a complication during the hospital course. These patients can have prolonged mechanical ventilation and are at risk of respiratory complications such as pleural effusion, pneumothorax, lung consolidation, interstitial-alveolar syndrome, and lung decruitment. Lung ultrasound is an efficient complementary diagnostic tool that is portable (ideal for unstable patients who cannot safely travel for gold standard imaging like computed topography of the chest) and offers higher sensitivity relative to plain radiographs, with some protocols offering accuracy >90% for the diagnosis of pneumonia, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pneumothorax [6]. Thus, lung ultrasound utilization has been supported by several national societies [2-4]. Despite this, as described above, there is a lack of resources for ultrasound education within neurocritical care units [5]. There is not published data regarding needs assessment for the neurocritical care unit with regard to ultrasound, but internal feedback from Neurocritical Care Society members suggests a lack of educational programming.