Ultrasound Diagnostics of Cardiogenic Dyspnea - New Diagnostic Challenge

Dyspnea is the third most common complaint for patients seeking help in the emergency units. Shortness of breath can be a leading symptom of various conditions and often determining its origin is a difficult task. Known methods for diagnosing acute left heart failure are not always sufficient to confirm or rule out the cardiogenic origin of dyspnea. Recently, lung ultrasound (LUS) has been introduced as an innovative complementary method for diagnosing cardiogenic dyspnea. It shows high reliability in distinguishing cardiogenic shortness of breath from shortness of breath in other diseases and conditions of non-cardiac origin such as: COPD, pulmofibrosis, pneumonia, bronchial asthma, foreign body in the airways, hysteria and others. The method is non-invasive. easily applicable to the patients bed, without a risk of radiation exposure, with the possibility of repeated longitudinal monitoring of the evolution of dyspnea, and has a low cost. The review article is dedicated to the diagnostic possibilities of LUS in cardiogenic dyspnea.