Diagnostic accuracy of Point Of Care UltraSound (POCUS) in clinical practice: A retrospective, emergency department based study.

AIMS: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is the acquisition and interpretation of ultrasound imaging at the bedside to solve specific clinical questions based on signs and symptoms of presentation. While several studies evaluated POCUS diagnostic accuracy for a variety of clinical pictures in the emergency department (ED), only a few data are available on POCUS diagnostic accuracy performed by physicians with different POCUS skills. The objective of this research was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of POCUS compared to standard diagnostic imaging in the ED. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a retrospective study conducted in the ED of a third-level university hospital. Patients who underwent cardiac, thoracic, abdominal, or venous lower limb POCUS and a standard imaging examination between June 2021 and January 2022 were included. RESULTS: 1047 patients were screened, and 844 patients included. A total of 933 POCUS was included (102, 12.09%, cardiac; 466, 55.21%, thoracic; 336, 39.8%, abdominal; 29, 3.44%, lower limb venous POCUS), accounting for 2029 examinations. POCUS demonstrated 96.6% (95% CI 95.72-97.34) accuracy, 47.73 (95% CI 33.64-67.72) +LR, 0.09 (95% CI 0.06-0.12) -LR. +LR was greater than 10 for all investigations but for hydronephrosis (5.8), and -LR never exceeded 0.4. CONCLUSIONS: POCUS exhibited high diagnostic accuracy for virtually all conditions when performed by emergency department physicians.

Minimal Lesions of the Small Intestinal Mucosa: More than Morphology.

Minimal lesions of the small bowel are mucosal changes characterized by an increased number of intraepithelial lymphocytes (with or without crypt hyperplasia) and normal villous architecture. Such changes are associated with a wide spectrum of conditions, ranging from food intolerances to infections, and from drugs to immune diseases, with different clinical profiles and manifestations, which complicates the formulation of a differential diagnosis. Patient history, symptom evaluation, and histopathology are the diagnostic features needed to establish a correct diagnosis. Physicians should assist pathologists in formulating a precise morphological evaluation by taking well-oriented small intestinal biopsies and collecting informative clinical findings that inform histopathology. In this current clinical controversy, the authors provide the reader with an appraisal of the small intestine minimal lesions through a careful analysis of the major conditions (e.g., celiac disease and other non-celiac disorders) responsible for such changes and their differential diagnosis. Also, we acknowledge that some of the diseases detailed in this article may progress from an early minimal lesion to overt mucosal atrophy. Thus, the timing of the diagnosis is of paramount importance.

ABCD2, ABCD2-I, and OTTAWA scores for stroke risk assessment: a direct retrospective comparison.

Transient ischemic attack (TIA) is a neurologic emergency characterized by cerebral ischemia eliciting a temporary focal neurological deficit. Many clinical prediction scores have been proposed to assess the risk of stroke after TIA; however, studies on their clinical validity and comparisons among them are scarce. The objective is to compare the accuracy of ABCD2, ABCD2-I, and OTTAWA scores in the prediction of a stroke at 7, 90 days, and 1 year in patients presenting with TIA. Single-centre, retrospective study including patients with TIA admitted to the Emergency Department of our third-level, University Hospital, between 2018 and 2019. Five hundred three patients were included. Thirty-nine (7.7%) had a stroke within 1 year from the TIA: 9 (1.7%) and 24 (4.7%) within 7 and 90 days, respectively. ABCD2, ABCD2-I, and OTTAWA scores were significantly higher in patients who developed a stroke. AUROCs ranged from 0.66 to 0.75, without statistically significant differences at each time-point. Considering the best cut-off of each score, only ABCD2 > 3 showed a sensitivity of 100% only in the prediction of stroke within 7 days. Among clinical items of each score, duration of symptoms, previous TIA, hemiparesis, speech disturbance, gait disturbance, previous cerebral ischemic lesions, and known carotid artery disease were independent predictors of stroke. Clinical scores have moderate prognostic accuracy for stroke after TIA. Considering the independent predictors for stroke, our study indicates the need to continue research and prompts the development of new tools on predictive scores for TIA.