Abstract
Background: Pneumonia is a common and serious infectious disease that can cause high mortality. Lung ultrasound (LUS) is increasingly utilized in emergency and critical settings. The role of LUS in evaluation of pneumonia is becoming more and more important. Objective: The current study was performed to compare the diagnostic accuracy of lung ultrasound against other modalities for evaluation and follow up of pneumonia in adult patients. Patients and Methods: One hundred and eight patients (70 males, 38 females) aged 57.33 ± 9.39 years admitted to the Chest Department with pneumonia from March to November 2019. After institute ethical committee clearance and written informed consent, each participant underwent chest X-ray (CXR), LUS and computed tomography (CT) within 6 hours from admission by 2 different radiologists being blind to the results of the other examination to minimize the bias. Follow up US was done after adequate medical treatment (7–14 days) to detect its ability for following the patients up. Results: A total of 108 patients who fulfilled the eligibility criteria were enrolled in this study LUS showed positive findings in 101 (93.5%) patients in the form of isoechoic area in 6 (5.5%) patients, dynamic air bronchogram alone in 25 (23.1%) patients and the last one was associated with all other sonographic signs of the studied patients. During follow up period, 55 (54.5%) of cases showed total resolution, while 33 cases (32.7%) showed regressive course of their sizes. Ten cases (9.9%) showed rather stationary course, while three cases (2.9%) showed progression course. The associated pleural effusion was resolved in 36 cases (90%) out of 40. Compared to CT, LUS showed a sensitivity and specificity of 93.33% and 94.74% for pneumonia detection respectively with 95.4% PPV, 92.4% NPV, and 93.91% accuracy. Conclusion: LUS considered being a good diagnostic and following up tool when pneumonia is suspected, its results were closer to CT with minimal cost.
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