Table 1 Description of echographic patterns in chest ultrasonography
From: Look at the lung: can chest ultrasonography be useful in pregnancy?
Echographic patterns | Description |
|---|---|
Normal | Immediately below the chest wall planes, the presence of a regular and continuous hyperechoic line (pleural line) without any evidence of artifactual vertical images and with motionless and regularly spaced horizontal artefacts of reverberation |
Lung consolidation | The evidence of well-delimitated subpleural (but surfacing in pleura) hypoechoic sonographic solid structures that are multiform in shape and at times involving whole lobes of the lung |
Pleural effusion | Fluid of whatever nature (inflammatory, transudative, hematic, etc.) that accumulates in the pleural space causing a separation of the parietal and visceral layers of the pleura, appearing as a prevalently non-echogenic area that collects between the lung parenchyma and the chest wall |
Focal sonographic interstitial syndrome | The presence of rare, dense, or confluent B-lines (hyperechoic narrowbased artifacts spreading like laser rays from the pleural line to the edge of the screen) or of white lung (completely white echographic lung field with or without merged B-lines and with no horizontal reverberation). Focal sonographic interstitial syndrome is topographically detectable only in relation to limited zones of pleuralparenchymal pathological alterations |