Point-of-care ultrasound: Coming soon to primary care?
With a little training, FPs can successfully use point-of-care ultrasound for various cardiac, pulmonary, and vascular assessments.
The potential applications of POCUS in family medicine are numerous and have been reviewed in several recent publications.12,13 In this article, we will review the evidence for the use of POCUS in 4 areas: the cardiovascular exam (FIGURES 1 and 2), the lung exam (FIGURES 3-6), the screening exam for AAAs (FIGURE 7), and the evaluation for DVT (FIGURES 8 and 9). (Obstetric and musculoskeletal applications have been sufficiently covered elsewhere.14-17) For all of these applications, POCUS is safe, accurate, and beneficial and can be performed with a relatively small amount of training by non-radiology specialists, including FPs (TABLEs 1 and 2).
