Chest Ultrasound versus Chest X-Ray in Children with Lower Respiratory Tract Infections

Lung ultrasound systematic review shows its prognostic and diagnostic role in acute viral bronchiolitis

“…excluded as reviews, [21][22][23][24][25] 2 due to lack of sonographic data, 26,27 and 1 as non-relevant to the topic because it presents diaphragm ultrasound data. 28 Finally, 18 of them [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] were eligible for use in this systematic review. For detailed characteristics of each study see Table 1.…”

“…Of these studies, fifteen were prospective observational studies, 30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,40,41,42,43,45,46 one was retrospective observational study 40 and two were cross-sectional studies. 29,44 Except for one multi-centre study, 37 all others were single-centre studies. One study was published in French, 41 one in Spanish, 38 and the remainder were published in English.…”

“…32,33,39,41,44,45 One study did not state the interpretation method. 29 We sorted these studies into groups according to the objective for further stratification of the results in our review.…”

“…Seven studies examined the accuracy of the two diagnostic methods (Table 3). 29,31,35,39,40,43,46 Five of them showed that LUS was more accurate than chest radiography in identifying lung consolidations as a marker of bronchiolitis. 29,31,35,40,46 LUS was found to be more sensitive than chest radiography.…”

“…29,31,35,39,40,43,46 Five of them showed that LUS was more accurate than chest radiography in identifying lung consolidations as a marker of bronchiolitis. 29,31,35,40,46 LUS was found to be more sensitive than chest radiography. Two prospective observational studies showed that LUS could recognise more accurately a pathological pattern in patients with bronchiolitis indicating that it was more valuable as a diagnostic tool compared to chest radiography.…”