ASE establishes vocabulary for cardiac POCUS to promote consistency

As cardiac point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) use continues to grow outside of traditional echo labs, the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) is working to ensure everyone speaks the same language when reporting on these exams. The group has issued a new guideline that aims to standardize the nomenclature in cardiac POCUS so everyone is on the same page when reading or discussing findings to reduce confusion and enhance patient safety.

The guideline, Recommendations for Cardiac Point-of-Care Ultrasound Nomenclature, establishes a deliberate vocabulary for cardiac POCUS-related terms to improve consistency. There was a growing concern that cardiac POCUS is used by clinicians from so many specialties that there could be inconsistencies in the language and terms they use.

“Many terms have been proposed to describe the use of ultrasound by bedside clinicians to image the heart, and the words we use matter,” James N. Kirkpatrick, MD, writing group chair and director of the echocardiography laboratory with University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, said in a statement. “We believe our recommended terms and definitions can be an important step in bringing together the different specialties that use cardiac POCUS to standardize what we do—all for the good of the patient.”

The writing group included non-cardiologists that represent large groups of cardiac POCUS users. This included a group co-chaired by Nova Panebianco, MD, professor of emergency medicine and director of emergency ultrasound at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jose Luis Diaz-Gomez, MD, institute chair—integrated hospital care at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and adjunct professor of anesthesiology at Baylor College of Medicine. Additionally, ASE said it included healthcare professionals from multiple stakeholder medical societies and a specialist in medical linguistics.