Critical care ultrasonography (CCUS) is increasingly advocated and used, and is defined as point-of-care image acquisition, interpretation and clinical application, all performed by the critical care clinician, and directed to inform on specific clinical questions.

Recently, Zaidi and Koenig described the use of ultrasonography in critical care in this journal, where they advocate using methods of CCUS appropriate for each patient-specific problem.

One of the frequent problems in critically ill patients is how to guide diagnostics and treatment in patients with hypotension or shock.

In these patients diagnostic challenges focus on unravelling the underlying cause(s), and treatment challenges focus on the need and titration of fluids, vasopressors and inotropes.

To capture the entire scope of the problem or provide necessary clues for unravelling the underlying causes, whole-body ultrasonography has been advocated to be more valuable than single organ CCUS.

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