Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Tuberculosis Management in Sub-Saharan Africa-A Balanced SWOT Analysis.

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is an increasingly accessible skill, allowing for the decentralization of its use to non-specialist healthcare workers to guide routine clinical decision making. The advent of ultrasound-on-a-chip has transformed the technology into a portable mobile health device. Due to its high sensitivity to detect small consolidations, pleural effusions and sub pleural nodules, POCUS has recently been proposed as a sputum-free likely triage tool for tuberculosis (TB). To make an objective assessment of the potential and limitations of POCUS in routine TB management, we present a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) analysis based on a review of the relevant literature and focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We idenitified numerous strengths and opportunities of POCUS for TB management e.g.; accessible, affordable, easy to use & maintain, expedited diagnosis, extra-pulmonary TB detection, safer pleural/pericardial puncture, use in children/pregnant women/PLHIV, targeted screening of TB contacts, monitoring TB sequelae, and creating AI decision support. Weaknesses and external threats such as operator dependency, lack of visualization of central lung pathology, poor specificity, lack of impact assessments and data from Sub-Saharan Africa must be taken into consideration to ensure that the potential of the technology can be fully realized in research as in practice

Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Tuberculosis Management in Sub-Saharan Africa-A Balanced SWOT Analysis.

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is an increasingly accessible skill, allowing for the decentralization of its use to non-specialist healthcare workers to guide routine clinical decision making. The advent of ultrasound-on-a-chip has transformed the technology into a portable mobile health device. Due to its high sensitivity to detect small consolidations, pleural effusions and sub pleural nodules, POCUS has recently been proposed as a sputum-free likely triage tool for tuberculosis (TB). To make an objective assessment of the potential and limitations of POCUS in routine TB management, we present a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) analysis based on a review of the relevant literature and focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We idenitified numerous strengths and opportunities of POCUS for TB management e.g.; accessible, affordable, easy to use & maintain, expedited diagnosis, extra-pulmonary TB detection, safer pleural/pericardial puncture, use in children/pregnant women/PLHIV, targeted screening of TB contacts, monitoring TB sequelae, and creating AI decision support. Weaknesses and external threats such as operator dependency, lack of visualization of central lung pathology, poor specificity, lack of impact assessments and data from Sub-Saharan Africa must be taken into consideration to ensure that the potential of the technology can be fully realized in research as in practice