Does bedside thoracic ultrasound for B-lines improve the diagnostic accuracy for congestive heart failure in dyspneic patients presenting to the emergency department?
Bedside thoracic ultrasound for B-lines, including a simplified two-zone protocol, provides valuable diagnostic utility and incremental predictive power over NT-proBNP for identifying heart failure in dyspneic emergency department patients.
Bedside thoracic US for B-lines can be a useful test for diagnosing CHF. Predictive accuracy is greatly improved when studies are totally positive or totally negative. A two-zone protocol performs similarly to an eight-zone protocol. Thoracic US can be used alone or can provide additional predictive power to NT-ProBNP in the immediate evaluation of dyspneic patients presenting to the ED.
Liteplo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.