Bedside Doppler ultrasound for the assessment of renal perfusion in the ICU: advantages and limitations of the available techniques

Three Doppler-derived techniques have been proposed to assess renal perfusion at bedside: Doppler-based renal resistive index (RI) which has been extensively but imperfectly studied in assessing renal allograft status and changes in renal perfusion in critically ill patients and for predicting the reversibility of an acute kidney injury (AKI), semi-quantitative evaluation of renal perfusion using colour-Doppler which may be easier to perform and may give similar information than RI and contrast-enhanced sonography that may allow more precise renal and cortical perfusion assessment. These promising tools have several obvious advantages including their feasibility, non-invasiveness, repeatability and potential interest in assessing renal function or perfusion. However, several limits need to be taken into account with these techniques, and promising results remain associated with large areas of uncertainty. This editorial will describe more carefully advantages and limits of these techniques and will discuss their potential interest in assessing renal perfusion. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13089-015-0024-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.