Ultrasound Imaging of the Thoracic Spine in Paramedian Sagittal Oblique Plane
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Ultrasound (US) imaging of the spine has been shown to be a reliable tool to facilitate lumbar epidural needle placement; however, its feasibility in thoracic epidural placement is still unknown. The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy and reliability of prepuncture US imaging in the paramedian sagittal oblique plane to estimate the depth to the epidural space and optimum insertion point for guiding epidural needle placement at the mid-low thoracic level. METHODS: This prospective study included 35 healthy adult patients who requested thoracic epidural analgesia before their upper abdominal surgeries. Ultrasound imaging was done in the paramedian sagittal oblique plane at the desired thoracic level to identify the intervertebral space, the distance from the skin to the epidural space (US depth [UD]) and the needle insertion point. Subsequently, a staff anesthesiologist located the epidural space through the predetermined insertion point and marked the actual distance from the skin to the epidural space (needle depth [ND]) on the needle with a sterile marker. The agreement between the UD and the ND was calculated using the Pearson and concordance correlation coefficients and Bland-Altman analysis with 95% limits of agreement. RESULTS: The average patient age was 56 (SD, 14) years, and body mass index was 28 (SD, 6) kg/m2. The precision of the agreement between UD and ND estimated by Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.75, and the accuracy was 0.80, whereas the concordance correlation coefficient was 0.60 (confidence interval, 0.43-0.78). The mean UD and ND were 4.3 (SD, 0.96) and 5.0 (SD, 1.2) cm, respectively. The Bland-Altman analysis showed a mean difference of -0.71 cm (95% limits of agreement, 0.8 to -2.2 cm). There was a significant direct correlation of the ND with the body mass index (r2 = 0.27, P = 0.008). The mean number of attempts was 1 (p25-p75 = 1-2), and the epidural space was identified with 2 or less redirections in 88% of the cases. CONCLUSIONS: We found a good correlation between the US-estimated distance to the epidural space and the actual measured needle distance in our patients. We suggest that our proposed prepuncture US method, using the paramedian sagittal oblique approach, can be a useful guide to facilitate the placement of epidural needles at mid-low thoracic levels. A randomized controlled trial is necessary to confirm the utility of prepuncture US in thoracic epidural placement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".