A CPU located in the emergency department can be a safe, effective, and cost-saving means of ensuring that patients with unstable angina who are considered to be at intermediate risk of cardiovascular events receive appropriate care.
Echocardiography in the emergency room presents exciting practice possibilities that can facilitate prompt and reliable diagnostic evaluations in patients with suspected cardiovascular emergencies. Echocardiography has the diagnostic potentials to evaluate the entire spectrum of cardiovascular abnormalities short of delineating coronary anatomy and evaluation of the conduction system. By reliably assessing the global and regional function, visualizing the cardiovascular structures from multiple tomographic planes, and quantitating hemodynamic abnormalities, echocardiography should be able to assist emergency room physician's evaluation and triage of the patients with chest pain syndrome, unexplained dyspnea, hypotension, shock, chest trauma, and cardiac arrest, whereby hopefully minimizing the unnecessary admission to the hospital and facilitating inhospital evaluation of the admitted patients with echocardiographic information. However, the optimal echocardiography practice in the emergency room requires well trained sonographers and echocardiographers who can respond to the clinical needs at anytime. Whether an emergency room physician can perform and interpret echocardiographic examinations satisfactorily will depend on his/her level of training and continuing education in this area. Currently, there is no established guideline for performing echocardiography in the emergency room. Further clinical investigations are necessary to define the most optimal and economical utilization of this versatile imaging and hemodynamic diagnostic modality in the emergency room.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.