Incidental findings during emergency sonographic examinations: a case series

The teaching of ultrasonography is rapidly being incorporated into emergency medicine (EM) training programs and clinical practice. Most literature focuses on appropriate indications for the performance of emergency ultrasonography, and most EM-related courses and programs limit their teaching to standard focused indications. Generally this will suffice; however, occasionally, incidental findings, which are beyond the realm of what is taught in these programs, have influenced patient care. In this paper we discuss 7 cases in which incidental findings were discovered during an emergency sonographic examination. In each case the findings changed the patient's disposition, diagnosis and, potentially, outcome.