Response

We thank Dr Morton for his comments on our recently published article on point-of-care ultrasonography (POCUS) in the intensive care unit for the obstetric patient.¹  We agree, further inquiry into the use of POCUS for assessing volume status in pregnancy, particularly as it pertains to patients with pre-eclampsia with severe features, is worthy of study. There is prior research evaluating cardiac parameters via transthoracic echocardiography among patients with pre-eclampsia with severe features.^2,3  As volume status is a clinical determination, noninvasive measurements like a physical examination evaluating for edema in the lungs, abdomen, and extremities as well as objective trends such as weight gain or loss, urine output, and laboratory parameters assist in this determination. Invasive measurements obtained from cardiac catheterizations or pulmonary arterial catheters can also aid in this clinical determination. As described, internal jugular vein ultrasound (IJV-US) is now being used to further characterize volume...