This is the bedside Echo of a critically ill young lady who was transferred in profound shock, intubated, and on high-dose pressors. She was on the brink of coding. Her working diagnoses were "SEPSIS" and “NSTEMI”.

Those crazy-looking, snake-like things you see swirling around in the right heart are blood clots. They have embolized from the deep veins and are threatening to become PEs. We call these “clots-in transit”. 

Seeing this Echo in this clinical scenario made the diagnosis of Massive PE instantly obvious. It changed everything. This young lady with many years of life ahead of her was able to get appropriate therapy and she survived. 

If there’s a message I want to get out it’s this:
If you take care of critically ill patients you owe it to them to learn Basic Echo. Take a few minutes to Echo ALL shock patients. I promise you will save lives. - Sam Ghali @EM_RESUS

#Clinical #POCUS #Cardiac #A4C #MassivePE #Embolism #Thrombus #Clots #InTransit