20th January 2017.
Carmelo Sgarlata, University of Pavia and Collegio A Volta.
Abstract
Acute dyspnea is one of the most frequent symptoms between patients admitted to the emergency department constituting a leading cause of hospitalization in internal medicine wards. The accurate and prompt identification of the etiology of the dyspnea is a critical factor in order to establish aeffective treatment and to improve clinical outcomes representing an open challenge for the internist daily engaged in the care of high clinically complex patients. Characteristics such as advanced age, multiple comorbidities and lack of cooperation are very common and can often significantly reduce not only the usefulness of physical examination but also the diagnostic accuracy of conventional imaging diagnostic technique such as chest radiography and CT scan. Numerous and solid evidences validated the effectiveness of lung ultrasound in the differential diagnosis of acute dyspnea and this sonographic technique showed a high diagnostic accuracy in many pathological conditions including diseases extremely frequent in internal medicine such as congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Lung ultrasound is very useful also in the uncooperative patient (aggressive, dementia etc) overcoming in this context conventional radiology. In these two seminars I will discuss advances in both physical examination of the chest and lung ultrasound principles and execution and its utility in the differential diagnosis of acute dyspnea in the internistic patient.
All interested students from College and outside, are welcome to attend. The poster of the talk can be downloaded here. The slides of the seminar on physical examination can be found here. The slides of the seminar on lung ultrasound can be found here.
References
[1] Cardinale L, Volpicelli G, Binello F, et al. Clinical application of lung ultrasound in patients with acute dyspnea: differential diagnosis between cardiogenic and pulmonary causes. Radiol Med 2009;114(7):1053-64.
[2] Sgarlata C, Guerriero F, Rollone M, Carbone M, & Magnani L. Lung ultrasound: clinical utility in uncooperative patients with psychomotor agitation and suspected pneumonia. It J Med 10(s2),107 (2016)
Biographical sketch
I’m a medical doctor and my work is actually focused on diagnosis and treatment of diseases in the area of internal medicine and geriatrics with particular regard to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease. I’ve also a great interest in the use of diagnostic ultrasound in internal medicine. I studied Medicine at Volta as an undergraduate graduating in July 2012 then I remained in residence afterward as a resident in Geriatrics. I’ve been secretary of the Volta Medical Society throughout the academic year 2013/14. I’m author of about 60 scientific publications on national and international journals and speaker at various conferences of national importance.
