FUSIC and FAMUS
The curricula of FUSIC (Focused Intensive care echo) and FAMUS (Focused Acute Medicine Ultrasound), have been promoting separated competences, to look at the heart and IVC in the patient with undifferentiated shock and at the lung in the patient with respiratory distress.
In reality heart and lungs are integrated physiologic systems and the assessment of one requires often information from the other.
A look to the heart is often desirable in a dyspneic patient with a sonografic wet lung (especially when the history is poor).
The patient could have an ARDS, an allergic alveolitis or an ILD, all conditions that share with the cardiogenic pulmonary oedema a fairly similar lung US pattern and all diagnosis supported by the finding of a normal systolic and diastolic function of the LV.
This is only one example of several clinical scenarios where competences in both echo and lung US are desirable and where the clinician’s mindset of an integrated POCUS approach could make the difference .