Diagnosing Diastolic Heart Failure in Emergency Department Patients Using Point-Of-Care Ultrasound
Monday, April 8, 2024
12:22pm – 12:29pm
Location: 412
Authors: Soheil Saadat, University of California, Irvine Megan Guy, UC Irvine Chris Fox, UCI Kyle Dornhofer, UC Irvine Tran Nguyen, University of California, Irvine ,
Congestive heart failure (CHF), impacting millions in the United States, is a leading cause of hospitalization with the elderly population and high mortality rate. Within the different types of CHF, diastolic heart failure (DHF) holds significant clinical importance with it comprising up to half of all heart failure cases. Even though echocardiogram interpreted by a cardiologist stands as the gold standard for diagnosing DHF, there is a motivation in the application of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) conducted in the emergency department (ED) by emergency physicians (EP) due to its potential for rapid diagnosis in minutes rather than hours with an echocardiogram along with it being inexpensive in comparison. The goal of this study is to determine if POCUS is effective in accurately diagnosing DHF. We hypothesize that a POCUS performed by EPs in the ED will be able to distinguish DHF at the same level as a comprehensive echocardiogram interpreted by a cardiologist. Our results indicate that POCUS had a 87.5% sensitivity in detecting diastolic heart failure and a 44.4% specificity in detecting the absence of heart failure. Therefore, POCUS has great potential in being a cost-effective, time efficient method in screening for DHF in the ED.