Resident Journal Review: Ultrasound Measurements of the Inferior Vena Cava Collapse as a Determinate of Intravascular Volume Status

Introduction: In the 1980s cardiologists began using the size of the inferior vena cava (IVC) as seen on ultrasound (US) as a surrogate for the right sided filling pressures of the heart .1 Over time, this concept has been investigated in patients in a variety of settings such as hemodialysis clinics, cardiac units, intensive care units (ICU), and the emergency department (ED). The emergency medicine-based literature has looked at this modality for assessing volume status over the past 15 years. Despite this research, there are still many questions about the utility of US assessments of the IVC, such as determining a standard anatomical location to measure the IVC, determining the reproducibility of measurements among different providers, and the ability of IVC collapse (defined below) to assess volume status and to predict volume responsiveness.