Lung ultrasound (LUS), when conducted by highly-skilled sonographers, performs well for the diagnosis of pneumonia, according to new research.
Guidelines do not currently recommend the use of lung ultrasound as an alternative to chest X-ray (CXR) or chest computerized tomography (CT) scan for the diagnosis of pneumonia.
However, based on their analysis of 10 studies involving LUS as a screening technique, researchers concluded that general practitioners and Emergency Medicine physicians should be encouraged to learn LUS since it appears to be an established diagnostic tool in the hands of experienced physicians.
