Ultrasound, the latest to diagnose pneumonia in children

Medicine continues to investigate new ways to make an increasingly early diagnosis. The investigation of new ways to detect conditions at the first symptoms is especially important in the case of children, as corroborated by the Spanish Association of Pediatrics, AEPED, which indicates that ultrasound can help diagnose pneumonia in children, "a diagnosis not easy" in the words of this organization

What is pneumonia?

The AEPED describes the pneumonia as a lung infection and he adds in this definition that his diagnosis is not easy. It occurs in the deep part of the lungs and in most cases is produced by viruses, but can also be caused by bacteria. Pneumonia often occurs after a cold. Among the main symptoms are high fever, cough, accelerated breathing, fatigue and malaise ... In the most severe cases requires hospitalization to deliver oxygen and drugs intravenously.

For the detection of pneumonia, pediatricians usually resort to blood tests or a chest x-ray at the first symptoms of this disease.

But, in particular, radiography has two drawbacks as a diagnostic mechanism. On the one hand, the emission of radiation in the smallest is not advisable. And on the other hand, not all medical centers have X-ray devices, so this method becomes a technique that is not available to everyone. Therefore, it was necessary to look for new methods of detecting pneumonia for minors and in this way overcome the barriers presented by the previous methods.

Specifically, AEPED points to ultrasound as the new method that can be useful in the diagnosis of pneumonia. This association emphasizes that unlike radiography, this tool does not emit radiation and that it does not have a high cost. A minimally invasive technique available to a large number of professionals, as highlighted by AEPED in a study highlighting the utility of ultrasound to diagnose pneumonia.

Results of the study on ultrasound to detect pneumonia in children

The AEPED carried out 15 studies for the analysis. In five of them, the person in charge of performing the test had no experience in this technique. In all of them, children with pneumonia and other healthy ones were used to check if the ultrasound was able to detect this condition. The results of this work gave the approval to this detection technique, since globally the ultrasound was able to diagnose pneumonia in the majority of cases.

Specifically, when comparing the results, it was verified that the ultrasound had diagnosed between 94 and 97 cases of pneumonia among the 100 children who participated in this study. In addition, the results also showed that pneumonia had been detected erroneously between 4 and 10 out of every 100 healthy children who underwent this test in the study.

However, the AEPED notes that despite the quality of all the studies conducted in this work, the characteristics of the same were not unanimous. That is, the age of the children was different, the experience of the sonographer was not the same and the diagnostic criteria for pneumonia were not the same in the fifteen studies that were conducted in this investigation.

This point means that you can not add all the results of this work as if it were one. However, the AEPED points out the practical utility of these results since, as the capacity of the sonographer increased, the diagnostic data increased close to 100%. So this association highlights the practicality of the ultrasound, especially if you take into account that it is not necessary a high preparation of the staff that makes it, is a minimally invasive technique, in addition to being affordable for most medical centers.

Damián Montero