Alexander Levitov, Heidi L Frankel, Michael Blaivas, Andrew W Kirkpatrick, Erik Su, David Evans, Douglas T Summerfield, Anthony Slonim, Raoul Breitkreutz, Susanna Price, Matthew McLaughlin, Paul E Marik, Mahmoud Elbarbary
OBJECTIVE: To establish evidence-based guidelines for the use of bedside cardiac ultrasound, echocardiography, in the ICU and equivalent care sites. METHODS: Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation system was used to rank the "levels" of quality of evidence into high (A), moderate (B), or low (C) and to determine the "strength" of recommendations as either strong (strength class 1) or conditional/weak (strength class 2), thus generating six "grades" of recommendations (1A-1B-1C-2A-2B-2C)...
June 2016: Critical Care Medicine