Kapoor S, Offnick A, Allen B, Brown PA, Sachs JR, Gurcan MN, Pinton G, D’Agostino R Jr, Bushnell C, Wolfe S, Duncan P, Asimos A, Sarwal A. See J Neuroimaging. 2022 Aug 4. DOI: 10.1111/jon.13031. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35924877.
https://lnkd.in/ec5z-y6J
CT and MRI have become the most common modalities for detection of intracranial pathology. With emerging applications of point-of-care ultrasound in emergency medicine and critical care, there has been an increasing interest in exploring the use of cranial ultrasound in the evaluation of patients with suspected brain injury in situations in which CT/MRI is either not available or not feasible due to clinical reasons, such as patient instability.
However, while the accuracy of diagnosis of intracranial pathology with ultrasound has been investigated extensively, we lack a reference source for images acquired on cranial topography with B-mode ultrasound to illustrate the appearance of normal and abnormal brain and skull structures. For this study, two investigators underwent hands-on training in Cranial point-of-care ultrasound (c-POCUS) and acquired multiple images from each patient to obtain the most in-depth images of brain to investigate all visible anatomical structures and pathology within 24 hours of any CT/MRI imaging done.
Most reproducible structures visible on c-POCUS included bony parts and parenchymal structures. Transcranial and abdominal presets were equivalent in elucidating anatomical structures. Brain pathology like parenchymal hemorrhage, cerebral edema, and hydrocephalus were also visualized. The authors write, “We hope the results of this study provide a pictorial reference library of sonographic cranial topography to serve further investigations in cranial ultrasound applications.” Please look at this wonderful free open-access resource for bedside c-POCUS!