Why the study?
Does focused echocardiography performed by nonspecialist physicians improve care in severely ill children in the PICU?
Does focused echocardiography performed by nonspecialist physicians improve care in severely ill children in the PICU?
Training pediatric emergency care physicians and intensivists to perform focused echocardiography is feasible and improves the care of critically ill children.
Supports focused echocardiography training for PICU nonspecialists; leaves open confirmation of outcome benefits in prospective trials.
Echocardiography is a key tool for hemodynamic assessment in Intensive Care Units (ICU). Focused echocardiography performed by nonspecialist physicians has a limited scope, and the most relevant parameters assessed by focused echocardiography in Pediatric ICU are left ventricular systolic function, fluid responsiveness, cardiac tamponade and pulmonary hypertension. Proper ability building of pediatric emergency care physicians and intensivists to perform focused echocardiography is feasible and provides improved care of severely ill children and thus should be encouraged.
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Gaspar et al. (2015) studied this question.
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