[Ultrasound's tips and pitfalls].

Ultrasound represents the 5th pillar of the clinical examination. There is no doubt about his improvement of diagnostic performance on the bedside examination. The POCUS (Point Of Care UltraSound) provides a binary answer to a simple question : « Does this suprapubic mass correspond to an overdistended bladder ? Is this cervical nodule a lymph node ? ».

[Point-of-care ultrasound for the diagnosis of small bowel occlusion: practical implications for emergency and primary care use].

Point-of-care ultrasound is a diagnostic tool that is gaining increasingly more ground in general and emergency practice; it allows the clinician to answer certain precise questions, including the presence of a small bowel occlusion. For this indication, ultrasound is useful in rapidly establishing a diagnosis and planning further work up.

Goal-directed ultrasound protocol in patients with nontraumatic undifferentiated shock in the emergency department: prospective dual centre study.

Background And Importance: Early identification of the cause of shock is associated with better prognosis.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the performances of an ultrasound protocol (echoSHOCK) to diagnose the cause of shock in the emergency department (ED).

Design, Settings And Participants: This was a prospective study performed in two EDs.

[Ultrasound in the emergency department as an extension of the practitioner's clinical examination].

Ultrasound in the emergency department and general practice can be used as an extension of the physical examination, answering simple questions. It requires a short basic training that is easily accessible. This article illustrates with a few examples (kidney, lung and fractures) the interest of this formidable tool becoming unavoidable in the emergency department and general practice.