Diagnostic Efficiency of Point-Of-Care Lung Ultrasonography in the Diagnosis of Adult Community-Acquired Pneumonia - A Single-Centre Study in Southeastern Nigeria.

Background: Lung ultrasonography is an emerging tool in diagnosing community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) - a major cause of mortality worldwide. The objective of the study was to determine the diagnostic performance of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) of the lung compared to the chest radiograph in the diagnosis of CAP in adults.

Methods: Adults ≥ 18 years presenting at the general and medical outpatient clinics, medical and emergency wards with symptoms of suspected CAP were evaluated using a portable ultrasound device and single posteroanterior chest radiograph. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV), positive and negative likelihood ratios (LR+ and LR-) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals were computed for the lung ultrasound (LUS) against the chest radiograph as the criterion standard.

Results: Out of the 65 patients eventually studied, 50 (76.9%) were diagnosed with pneumonia by chest radiograph. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, LR+, LR- and DOR for the LUS against the chest radiograph, respectively, were 96% (95%CI, 86.3% - 99.5%), 93.3% (95%CI, 68.1% - 99.8%), 98.0% (95%CI, 87.8% - 99.7%), 87.5% (64.1% - 96.5%), 14.4 (95%CI, 2.2 - 95.7), 0.04 (95%CI, 0.01 - 0.17) and 336 (28.3 - 3985.0). The overall accuracy was 95.4% (95%CI, 87.1 - 99.0%). The median time to completion of the LUS was 13 minutes.

Conclusion: Lung ultrasound at the point of care is a reasonably accurate tool for the diagnosis of CAP in adults presenting with typical features.