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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Pediatric Pulmonology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1582647
This article is part of the Research TopicUse of lung ultrasound in critical ill children with acute lung diseaseView all articles
Evaluation of the Application Value of Ultrasound in the Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Children: A Preliminary Study Based on Large-Scale Outpatient Cases
Provisionally accepted- Liuzhou People's Hospital, Liuzhou, China
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Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic value of lung ultrasound (LUS) for childhood community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).Methods: A case-control study was conducted among pediatric outpatients with suspected CAP who underwent LUS examination. Baseline data such as clinical manifestations were collected. Diagnostic performance was assessed using Pearson Chi-square tests, with CT scans as the gold standard. Specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of LUS were analyzed.Results: The study included 246 patients who underwent both LUS and CT (observation group) and 111 controls who received concurrent chest X-ray and CT within one week. LUS demonstrated significantly higher sensitivity (91.30% vs. 75.00%, P<0.001) than chest X-ray group , while specificity, PPV, and NPV showed no statistically significant (P>0.05) .Conclusion: LUS exhibits high concordance with CT in pediatric CAP diagnosis, demonstrating excellent screening and diagnostic value for childhood CAP.
Keywords: Children, Community-acquired pneumonia, diagnostic value, Lung ultrasound (LUS), outpatient
Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 17 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qin, Huang, Lan, Nie, Luo, Cheng, Li, Tang and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhao Ma, Liuzhou People's Hospital, Liuzhou, China
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