Bedside Ultrasound Identifies Congestive Heart Failure

Patients often arrive to the Emergency Department with the chief complaint of shortness of
breath. The cause of the shortness of breath may be due to many things, such as pneumonia,
emphysema, a heart attack, heart failure, and others. It is often very difficult for the
physician to determine the cause of the shortness of breath in the first two hours in the
Emergency Department. This ambiguity makes treating the patient very difficult. Although a
patient could benefit from treatment upon arrival, the emergent treatment of the condition
must wait until a final diagnosis is made.

Recently, emergency physicians have been using portable ultrasound at the patient's bedside
to diagnose numerous conditions, including trauma, blood clots, kidney stones, etc. Recent
research suggests that heart failure, one of the causes of shortness of breath, may be
diagnosed within 5 minutes or less using ultrasound. Most of these studies come from the
intensive care and cardiology. However, no research has yet been performed to determine if
emergency physicians can effectively use ultrasound to quickly diagnose and treat heart
failure within the first few minutes of a patient's arrival to the emergency department.
The hypothesis of this study is to evaluate the ability of residents in emergency medicine
to use ultrasound to diagnose patients in heart failure who presented with the chief
complaint of shortness of breath. The final diagnosis of the patient upon discharge from
the hospital will be compared to the preliminary diagnosis based on the portable ultrasound
findings.