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
Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Jun;50(5):618-627.
doi: 10.1002/jcu.23184. Epub 2022 Mar 9.

The diagnostic performance of lung ultrasound for detecting COVID-19 in emergency departments: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Reem Jari  1 , Abdulrahman M Alfuraih  2 , James R McLaughlan  3
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The diagnostic performance of lung ultrasound for detecting COVID-19 in emergency departments: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Reem Jari et al. J Clin Ultrasound. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

Purpose: To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of published literature investigating the use of lung ultrasound (LUS) on COVID-19 patients, in emergency point of care settings, and to determine its diagnostic value compared with lung computed tomography (LCT) diagnostic performance. Whilst using the real-time polymerase chain reaction test as the 'gold standard'.

Methods: Literature searches were performed on MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and PubMed databases for eligible studies. The LUS and LCT pooled diagnostic performance were measured using DerSimonian-Laird random effect method.

Result: Out of a total of 158 studies, 16 met the eligibility criteria and were included in this review. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios were 86.9%, 62.4%, 2.4 and 0.19, respectively for LUS and 93.5%, 72.6%, 3.3 and 0.05, respectively for LCT.

Conclusion: The lung ultrasound (LUS) demonstrated acceptable sensitivity but poor specificity when used independently to diagnose COVID-19 pneumonia patients in emergency departments, while the lung computed tomography showed higher performance. Thus, LUS can be used to supplement existing diagnostic tools and possibly for the triage of patients.

Keywords: COVID-19; lung computed tomography; lung ultrasound; meta-analysis; systematic review.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Flowchart of search process and study inclusion
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The included studies Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies‐2 results
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Forest plot of lung ultrasound pooled sensitivity and specificity of detecting COVID‐19 pneumonia, which shows acceptable, pooled sensitivity but poor specificity. The negative likelihood ratio of 0.19 illustrate less probability of the disease, while positive likelihood ratio of 2.39 indicate increase the disease probability
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Show that the lung computed tomography (LCT) has greater summary receiver operating characteristic (green curve) compare to the lung ultrasound (black curve) indicating higher LCT diagnostic performance
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Rothan H, Byrareddy S. The epidemiology and pathogenesis of coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) outbreak. J Autoimmun. 2020;109:102433. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Manivel V, Lesnewski A, Shamim S, Carbonatto G, Govindan T. CLUE: COVID‐19 lung ultrasound in emergency department. Emerg Med Australas. 2020;32(4):694‐696. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sureka B, Garg P, Saxena S, Garg M, Misra S. Role of radiology in RT‐PCR negative COVID‐19 pneumonia: review and recommendations. J Fam Med Primary Care. 2021;10(5):e1814. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arevalo‐Rodriguez I, Buitrago‐Garcia D, Simancas‐Racines D, et al. False‐negative results of initial RT‐PCR assays for COVID‐19: a systematic review. PLOS One. 2020;15(12):1‐19. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ai T, Yang Z, Hou H, et al. Correlation of chest CT and RT‐PCR testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) in China: a report of 1014 cases. Radiology. 2020;296(2):E32‐E40. - PMC - PubMed