Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Oct 30;12(20):19945-19953.
doi: 10.18632/aging.104150. Epub 2020 Oct 30.

Lung ultrasound is a reliable diagnostic technique to predict abnormal CT chest scan and to detect oxygen requirements in COVID-19 pneumonia

Géraldine Falgarone  1   2 , Frédéric Pamoukdjian  1   3 , Johann Cailhol  4   5 , Audrey Giocanti-Auregan  6 , Sandrine Guis  7   8 , Guilhem Bousquet  1   9 , Olivier Bouchaud  4   5 , Olivier Seror  10   11   12
Affiliations

Lung ultrasound is a reliable diagnostic technique to predict abnormal CT chest scan and to detect oxygen requirements in COVID-19 pneumonia

Géraldine Falgarone et al. Aging (Albany NY). .

Abstract

COVID-19 pneumonia can be severe, with an unpredictable evolution and high mortality prevalence in older patients. The diagnosis is usually performed by RT-PCR or CT chest scan. Lung ultrasonography (LUS) has been proposed as an alternative method to monitor patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. To assess the diagnostic performance of LUS, we performed LUS using a portable device and adapting a protocol already used in Acute Respiratory Syndrome. We used the score obtained with the index we created to assess for LUS diagnostic performance as compared to lung CT chest scan and to predict for oxygen requirements. Daily bedside LUS was easy to perform and microbiologically safe. LUS was 89% sensitive and 100% specific in predicting CT chest scan abnormalities, and 95% sensitive and 67% specific in detecting oxygen requirements. This is the first report on the diagnostic performance of LUS as compared to CT chest scan for the diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia and assessments of oxygen requirements by LUS. LUS could help in the orientation of dyspneic patients to intensive care. It could also be proposed when there is limited access to CT scan in the context of a pandemic crisis, or to implement clinical lung examinations for outpatient follow-up.

Keywords: COVID-19; diagnosis; follow-up; lung ultrasound; oxygen need; pneumonia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: All authors declare to have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Receiver operating characteristics curves for LUS to screen for COVID-19: ROC for LUS to predict abnormal CT scan.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A)This panel shows a grade 2 LUS image for a 45-year-old man at 10 days from initial symptoms, requiring oxygen (6 l/min), with a severity index of 0.58. On this sagittal ultrasound view encompassing a right anterior inter-rib space (arrows: rib shadows), one can see a typical lung rocket (arrow) as breath moving comet-tail artefact. (B) This panel shows an axial image of the corresponding CT scan performed at admission with typical COVID-19 interstitial pneumonia combining septal thickening (arrow) and peripheral ground glass opacities (stars).
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) LUS to screen for oxygen requirement ≥ 0.5 l/min; (B) CT scan to screen for oxygen requirement ≥ 0.5 l/min.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Song F, Shi N, Shan F, Zhang Z, Shen J, Lu H, Ling Y, Jiang Y, Shi Y. Emerging 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pneumonia. Radiology. 2020; 295:210–17. 10.1148/radiol.2020200274 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wang D, Hu B, Hu C, Zhu F, Liu X, Zhang J, Wang B, Xiang H, Cheng Z, Xiong Y, Zhao Y, Li Y, Wang X, Peng Z. Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China. JAMA. 2020; 323:1061–69. 10.1001/jama.2020.1585 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bousquet G, Falgarone G, Deutsch D, Derolez S, Lopez-Sublet M, Goudot FX, Amari K, Uzunhan Y, Bouchaud O, Pamoukdjian F. ADL-dependency, D-dimers, LDH and absence of anticoagulation are independently associated with one-month mortality in older inpatients with COVID-19. Aging (Albany NY). 2020; 12:11306–13. 10.18632/aging.103583 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Pan Y, Guan H, Zhou S, Wang Y, Li Q, Zhu T, Hu Q, Xia L. Initial CT findings and temporal changes in patients with the novel coronavirus pneumonia (2019-nCoV): a study of 63 patients in Wuhan, China. Eur Radiol. 2020; 30:3306–09. 10.1007/s00330-020-06731-x - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Han X, Cao Y, Jiang N, Chen Y, Alwalid O, Zhang X, Gu J, Dai M, Liu J, Zhu W, Zheng C, Shi H. Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia progression course in 17 discharged patients: comparison of clinical and thin-section computed tomography features during recovery. Clin Infect Dis. 2020; 71:723–31. 10.1093/cid/ciaa271 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources