The Expanding Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Paradigm

Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) is an ever-evolving technology that has become integral to clinical practice in a variety of domains.Since its inception in Emergency Medicine (EM) in the 1980s, POCUS has traditionally been viewed as a tool to make binary decisions in response to focused clinical questions [1,2].Current literature continues to cite POCUS as a means to rule in or out specific diagnoses and answer simple, yes-or-no questions: Is there a live intrauterine pregnancy?Is this abdominal pain caused by an abdominal aortic aneurysm?Is this leg swelling due to a deep vein thrombosis [3-5]?The adage that each POCUS scan should answer one specific question is often recited in POCUS education tools, and POCUS archiving and reporting materials are typically centered around this same binary paradigm [6].This view is particularly prevalent among those who are less familiar with POCUS, who view the tool as a limited, operatordependent technology to make these types of quick decisions.