呼吸器・呼吸器内科

Role of thoracic ultrasound in detecting pulmonary complications in COVID19

Abstract

Saeed MM*

Introduction: COVID-19 is a serious rapidly spread viral infectious disease that appear in Wuhan city in China in December 2019 and soon became pandemic infection; the disease shows high mortality throughout the world that increased with complications, pulmonary complications of COVID-19 may be the corner stone of both morbidity and mortality as hypoxia secondary to lungs involvement may be the cause of other complication or  may worse it, so early detection of pulmonary complication and early suitable intervention no doubt improve the outcome of COVID-19. The stander investigation to detect pulmonary complication is computed tomography (CT), but it is not available in many centers or there may be barriers to use it, so this study done to evaluate the role of thoracic ultrasound in detecting pulmonary complications in COVID-19, as it is bed side easy procedure that available in most centers.

Materials and Methods: This is a prospective interventional hospital base study, done in Port Sudan COVID isolation centre from July to September 2020, using portable ultrasound with 7mm convex probe following BLUE protocol, and indicated therapeutic intervention done according the diagnosis.

Result: 24 patients were enrolled in this study, 70.8% male and 29.2 % female. 12 patients (50 %) showed features of pulmonary oedema, 4 patients (16.7 %) showed features of pneumonia, other 4 (16,7 % ) patients showed sonological features of ILD, 2 patients (8.3%) showed features of ARDS, and 2 patients (8.3%) showed feature of pleural effusion regardless the cause of effusion.

Conclusion: Thoracic ultrasound is an effective diagnostic tool that detect the pulmonary complications in COVID-19 with reasonable sensitivity and specify that in addition to clinical background give high diagnostic value and it should be the choice in area of constrained facilities or whenever computed tomography can't be used.