A study presented at therecent meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians by Margarita Oks and
her colleagues found that the use of ultrasound in the ICU as opposed to other
imaging technues such as x-rays did not adversely affect outcomes. The
team studied medical charts covering 3
months of data comparing chest x-rays, CT scans, and ultrasound between two
independent but similar medical intensive care units staffed by the same
medical house staff in the same health-care system. One unit used bedside
ultrasound as the standard of care for diagnosis; the second used conventional
imaging, such as x-rays and CT scans, as its standard of care in diagnosis.”We
found that the use of ultrasound to diagnose patients greatly reduced radiation
exposure for patients without negatively affecting their health,” said Dr Oiks.
The researchers found that there were 5.21 x-rays done per patient stay in the
ICU using x-rays and CT scans, while there were 1.10 x-rays per patient stay in
the unit using ultrasound as the standard of care. Total CT scans were 0.91 per
patient stay in the non-ultrasound ICU vs. 0.26 in the ultrasound unit. There
were 0.27 cardiac echocardiograms in the non-ultrasound ICU vs. 0.11 in the
ultrasound ICU per patient stay. Mortality rates did not differ greatly, namely
0.27 in the non-ultrasound ICU vs. 0.20 in the ultrasound ICU.