Commentary: Comparison of newer hand-held ultrasound devices for post-dive venous gas emboli quantification to standard echocardiography.

Abstract

We read with interest the study by Karimpour et al. (2022) comparing two new portable devices to standard echography on the task of Venous Gas Embolism (VGE) detection in scuba divers. In operating conditions of open water dives, the authors compared portable 2D echograph Butterfly iQ and Doppler ultrasound device O'Dive to a 2D echograph Vivid Q currently used for VGE detection in research. There are however several important aspects of the study that need to be considered. To evaluate monitoring difficulty with each device in operating conditions the reader would need (i) 39 the total number of dives that authors attempted to monitor, (ii) the number of dives successfully 40 monitored at least once with at least one device, (iii) the number of VGE scores obtained with each 41 device, (iv) the number of dives with a full set of measurements for each device. Moreover, it would 42 be pertinent to report if for some divers the monitoring was complicated or impossible due to some 43 physiological characteristics. Unfortunately, the only information about monitored dives and divers 44 provided was the number of subjects enrolled in the study. 45The authors excluded from analysis VGE scores from devices when a paired measurement from other