title: Focused Echocardiography in Life Support: The Subcostal Window : What the Surgeon Should Know for Critical Care Applications.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Focused echocardiography evaluation in life support (FEEL) for emergency and critical caremedicine is an innovative approach to introducing limited-in-scope echocardiography in a timely fashion into periresuscitation care. FEEL is an advanced life support-conformed concept and a simple procedure that can be readily used in shock roomor pre-hospital scenarios as an extension of focused abdominal sonography for trauma (FAST). The subcostal window plays a pivotal role in this context, because it can easilybe applied inthesupine position, and is usually better than other windows in patients with mechanical ventilation or during resuscitation maneuvers. Most information can be obtained at a glance.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  As the FAST exam was not developed for implementation in resuscitation or cardiac arrest procedures, herewedescribe an accurate and easymethod that allows non-cardiologists to add FEEL to the FAST exam. As a result, it conforms to actual resuscitation guidelines. To perform the FEEL procedure and the subcostal window, a specific training seems to bemandatory. The aim of this paper is to set special emphasis on the use of the subcostal window.
authors.affiliation: Clinics of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. raoul.breitkreutz@gmail.com.|Clinics of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. raoul.breitkreutz@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Raoul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Breitkreutz
authors.affiliation: Trauma Surgery, Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Walcher
authors.affiliation: Clinics of Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Hendrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ilper
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Seeger
authors.affiliation: Adult Intensive Care Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK.
authors.forename: Susanna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Price
authors.affiliation: 1st Department of Anesthesia and Intensive, Care, Fondazione, IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, P.zzale Golgi 2, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Via
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Kerckhoff Heart Center, Bad Nauheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Holger
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Steiger
keywords: Echocardiography in life support; Focused; Nonspecialist; Periresuscitation care; Time; Training
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