Response to Letter to the editor: Lung Ultrasound in COVID-19 Patients – More Shadows Than Information – Letter to the Editor on the Article “W. LU et al. Ultraschall in Med. 2020 Apr 15”

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your interest with our recent study [1].Our study is the first to describe the characteristics of lung ultrasound findings and the distribution of lung lesions in the patients with COVID-19, and was performed in the early stage of the outbreak. Our conclusion is that ultrasound has important clinical significance for noninvasive assessment and dynamic observation of lung lesions in COVID-19. We agree with the limitations of ultrasound indicated, including obesity, subcutaneous emphysema, bone preventing penetration of the ultrasound beam, location of lesions, angles of detection, distance of lesions from the pleura. Ultrasound is not sensitive enough to detect lung lesions in central lung zones. However, the lesions of COVID-19 are mainly distributed in the peripheral pulmonary zones and progressing from the peripheral zone to the central zone [2] [3], which provides favorable conditions for an ultrasound examination. Ultrasound has the characteristics of convenience, rapid, non-invasive, non-radiation and easy to be evaluated repeatedly, so it is worth popularizing clinically.

^# These authors contributed equally to this work.

^* These authors are co-corresponding authors.

Publication History

Article published online:
25 June 2020

• References

• 1 Lu WZ, Zhang SS, Chen BH. et al A clinical study of noninvasive assessment of lung lesions in patients with coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) by bedside ultrasound. Ultraschall in Med 2020; Online ahead of print. DOI: 10.1055/a-1154-8795
• 2 Yoon SH, Lee KH, Kim JY. et al Chest radiographic and CT findings of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Analysis of nine patients treated in Korea. Korean J Radiol 2020; 4: 494-500 . doi:10.3348/kjr.2020.0132
• 3 Dai H, Zhang X, Xia JG. et al High-resolution chest CT features and clinical characteristics of patients infected with COVID-19 in Jiangsu, China. Int J Infect Dis 2020; 95: 106-112 . doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.04.003
• 4 Xie HQ, Zhang WW, Sun DS. et al Interstitial lung disease in connective tissue disease: A meta-analysis. Arthritis Res Ther 2019; 1: 93 . doi:10.1186/s13075-019-1888-9