Comparison of lung ultrasonography, transthoracic echocardiography and clinical findings in assessing volume status in patients receiving renal replacement therapy

Abstract

While transthoracic echocardiography and clinical findings are used to assess body volume status, lung ultrasonography (LUS), which is a non-invasive method, has also been used in assessing hypervolemia in recent years. This study aims to compare LUS, transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) and clinical findings in the assessment of body volume status in patients receiving renal replacement therapy (RRT). The study included 99 subjects who received RRT and were followed-up in our hospital. The patients were randomly selected from kidney transplant patients and those who had been receiving peritoneal dialysis (PD) or hemodialysis (HD) for at least the past three months. In addition, a control group consisting of 52 healthy subjects was also enrolled. LUS and TTE were simultaneously performed (within 24 hours). The mean left atrial (LA) diameter was 37.8±2.7 mm, 37.9±3.4 mm, 38.6±3.5 mm and 29.0±4.4 mm in patients who received PD, kidney transplantation, HD and in the control group, respectively. There was a moderate positive correlation between the total number of B-lines and LA diameter (mm) in the combined group consisting of the patient and control groups (p=0.0001, r=0.286). In this study, the number of B-lines on LUS has been found to be higher in patients receiving renal replacement therapy due to the effect of hypervolemia compared to the control group. However, there was no statistically significant difference in terms of the number of B-lines and LA diameter in echocardiography.