Archives of disease in childhood
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Observational Study
Prospective observational study of point-of-care ultrasound for diagnosing pneumonia.
The clinical diagnosis of pneumonia lacks specificity and may lead to antibiotic overuse, whereas radiological diagnoses can lack sensitivity. Point-of-care lung ultrasound is an emerging diagnostic tool. There are limited prospective data, however, on the accuracy of sonologists in the paediatric emergency department setting. We aimed to test the diagnostic accuracy of lung ultrasound for pneumonia using chest radiograph (CR) as the reference standard. ⋯ Lung ultrasound may have a role as first-line imaging in patients with possible pneumonia, with higher specificity for consolidations exceeding 1 cm.