Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Dear Editor,
During the COVID-19 outbreak, nurses were critical to saving patients’ lives and improving medical outcomes. Because the disease was highly contagious, protective clothing and gloves were worn in nursing practice. Many procedures, such as peripheral vein puncture and blood collection, were difficult to do. Ultrasound was being performed by doctors to guide hemodynamic monitoring and lung evaluation in ICU [1]. Besides, nurses could use ultrasound to solve difficulties in nursing, such as ultrasound-guided vascular puncture, chest physical therapy, and gastric residual volume (GRV) measurement (Fig. 1). Ultrasound was making nursing easier in critically care. In this letter, we summarize the application of ultrasound in patients of COVID-19.
×
Anzeige
Ultrasound: a useful tool for nursing procedures
Nurse applied ultrasound to visualize the tip of the catheter and target the vessels in real time and increase the success rate [2]. During the placement of a feeding tube, nurses can identify the esophagus and airway through ultrasound for the first time. Similarly, ultrasound was useful to the placement of the jejuna nutrition tube [3]. The application of ultrasound helps to avoid risks and optimize care procedures.
Ultrasound: qualitative and quantitative assessments for nursing
Through ultrasound, nurses can carry out hemodynamic assessment, lung assessment, GRV measurement, thrombosis screening, and so on. Take GRV as an example. Studies reported a good correlation between the gastric antral cross-sectional area and GRV [4]. Ultrasound could dynamically assess GRV and the contraction of the gastric antrum. Ultrasound was performed to assess the patient’s condition and implement effective nursing measures.
Ultrasound: bedside decision-making for nurses
Dyspnea was common in patients with COVID-19. Nurses play an important role in lung care. 90.5% of acute respiratory failure can be accurately diagnosed within 3 min by BLUE protocol. For patients with lung consolidation, goal-oriented chest physiotherapy could be applied based on ultrasound signs [5]. For patients with pulmonary interstitial syndrome, nurses need to pay more attention to indicators such as edema, inflow and outflow, and CVP.
In this COVID-19 outbreak, the application of ultrasound in patients involves ultrasound-led nursing assessment and ultrasound-guided nursing procedures. Ultrasound was helpful to solve existing problems in nursing practice and guide bedside decision-making. Ultrasound has now become easily available and nurses could benefit from integrating this technology into their clinical practice when taking care of the critically ill.
Anzeige
Acknowledgements
None.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
None.
Consent for publication
All authors agree to publish in this journal.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Der optimale Ansatz für die Blutdruckkontrolle bei Patientinnen und Patienten mit akutem Schlaganfall ist noch nicht gefunden. Ob sich eine frühzeitige Therapie der Hypertonie noch während des Transports in die Klinik lohnt, hat jetzt eine Studie aus China untersucht.
Laut einer Studie aus den USA und Kanada scheint es bei der Reanimation von Kindern außerhalb einer Klinik keinen Unterschied für das Überleben zu machen, ob die Wiederbelebungsmaßnahmen während des Transports in die Klinik stattfinden oder vor Ort ausgeführt werden. Jedoch gibt es dabei einige Einschränkungen und eine wichtige Ausnahme.
Eine ältere Frau trinkt regelmäßig Sennesblättertee gegen ihre Verstopfung. Der scheint plötzlich gut zu wirken. Auf Durchfall und Erbrechen folgt allerdings eine Hyponatriämie. Nach deren Korrektur kommt es plötzlich zu progredienten Kognitions- und Verhaltensstörungen.
In der Notaufnahme wird die Chance, Opfer von häuslicher Gewalt zu identifizieren, von Orthopäden und Orthopädinnen offenbar zu wenig genutzt. Darauf deuten die Ergebnisse einer Fragebogenstudie an der Sahlgrenska-Universität in Schweden hin.
Update AINS
Bestellen Sie unseren Fach-Newsletter und bleiben Sie gut informiert.