Ultrasonografía pulmonar en el enfermo grave. Propuesta del Servicio de Medicina Intensiva de la Fundación Clínica Médica Sur. Parte I

Management of critically ill patients requires imaging techniques, which are essential for optimizing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Recently, chest ultrasound has become an attractive new tool for assessing lung status in critically ill patients, as suggested by the increasing number of articles written about it by physicians practicing intensive care medicine. Accuracy of lung ultrasound for diagnosing pneumothorax, lung consolidation, lung contusion, alveolar-interstitial syndrome, ARDS and pleural effusion in the critically ill is clearly established. The routine use of lung ultrasound appears as an attractive alternative to bedside chest radiography: it is non-invasive, easily repeatable at the bedside and provides an accurate evaluation of the respiratory status of patients with acute lung injury. Lung ultrasound performed by physicians in charge of intensive care units appears to be one of the most promising techniques for respiratory monitoring and should rapidly expand in the near future. We review the state of the art and present our own cases managed in the Intensive Care Unit of the Clinic Foundation Medica Sur. Its important emphasize that this it’s the first paper about lung ultrasound in the critically ill in Mexico.