Focused echocardiography: a systematic review of diagnostic and clinical decision-making in anaesthesia and critical care

Abstract

Focused echocardiography is becoming a widely used tool to aid clinical assessment by anaesthetists and critical care physicians. At the present time, most physicians are not yet trained in focused echocardiography or believe that it may result in adverse outcomes by delaying, or otherwise interfering with, time-critical patient management. We performed a systematic review of electronic databases on the topic of focused echocardiography in anaesthesia and critical care. We found 18 full text articles, which consistently reported that focused echocardiography may be used to identify or exclude previously unrecognised or suspected cardiac abnormalities, resulting in frequent important changes ..