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Healthy Aging Research

Healthy Aging Research
Open Access

ISSN: 2261-7434

+44-20-4587-4809

Abstract

Comparison the diagnostic accuracy of conventional radiography with ultrasound for the diagnosis of pneumonia

Seyed Jahangir Ebrahimi Vafaei, Susan Mohammadi, Nahid Zamanimehr, Kourosh Akhbari, Daem Roshani, Leila Azizkhani*

Introduction: Pneumonia is a serious and common infectious disease with high morbidity and mortality. Recently, the use of lung ultrasound as a standard device in emergency centers has begun, which is a fast and accessible way of diagnosing pneumonia. The aim of the present study was to comparison the diagnostic accuracy of conventional radiography with ultrasound for the diagnosis of pneumonia. Materials and Methods: This study was performed on 146 patients over 18 years old who referred to the emergency department of Kowsar Hospital in Sanandaj in 2017-2018. Portable ultrasound and radiography were performed for all patients. Ultrasound images were recorded by a sonologist with the presence of an emergency medicine specialist and an emergency medicine resident. In these patients, CT scans were used as a gold standard to compare the results of chest radiographs and portable ultrasound. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of ultrasound to radiography in the diagnosis of pneumonia were calculated. Results: In this study 146 patients with the mean age of 64.2 years old were studied. 65% of patients had febrile, 63% of patients had sputum, 58.9% had pathologic auscultation, 52.7% had cough and 52.1% had shortness of breath. Results showed that sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of ultrasound test were 44.4%, 100%, 100% and 0%, respectively, and for radiographic test were 25.92%, 100%, 100% and 0%, respectively. The results also showed that sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value, and area under the ROC curve of sonography test compared to the radiographic test were 91.27%, 0%, 95.83%, 0% and 91.3%, respectively. Conclusion: The findings of the present study showed that ultrasound is very accurate in the diagnosis of pneumonia and because of its availability and feasibility; it can be a good alternative for chest radiography and chest CT scan.

Published Date: 2020-02-04; Received Date: 2020-01-20

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