B-Lines for the assessment of extravascular lung water: Just focused or semi-quantitative?

Background: B-lines as typical artefacts of lung ultrasound are considered as surrogate measurement for extravascular lung water. However, B-lines develop in the sub-pleural space and do not allow assessment of the whole lung. Here, we present data from the first observational multi-centre study focusing on the correlation between a B-lines score and extravascular lung water in critically ill patients suffering from a variety of diseases.

The 'TEI-index' is preload dependent and can be measured by transoesophageal echocardiography during mechanical ventilation.

Background And Objective: The Doppler-derived echocardiographic TEI-index, defined as the sum of the left ventricular isovolumic contraction and isovolumic relaxation times divided by ejection time, quantifies combined systolic and diastolic ventricular functions. The index has been proposed to be independent of arterial pressure and heart rate, implying a broad clinical usefulness. However, it is unclear whether the index is preload independent.

Perfusing and ventilating the patient's lungs during bypass ameliorates the increase in extravascular thermal volume after coronary bypass grafting.

Background: To test the hypothesis that bilateral extracorporeal circulation (ECC) (Drew technique) ameliorates the increase in extravascular thermal volume (ETV) observed after conventional cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting.

Methods: Thirty-four consecutive patients underwent either bilateral ECC (n = 24, additional cannulation of pulmonary artery and left atrium and lungs perfused and ventilated during bypass) or conventional CPB (n = 10, right atrial and aortic cannulation, lungs statically inflated to 4 mbar (0.41 cm H(2)O) with oxygen, 500 mL/min).