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COVID-19Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 20|pp 19945—19953

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

Géraldine Falgarone1,2, Frédéric Pamoukdjian1,3, Johann Cailhol4,5, Audrey Giocanti-Auregan6, Sandrine Guis7,8, Guilhem Bousquet1,9, Olivier Bouchaud4,5, Olivier Seror10,11,12
  • 1Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, INSERM UMR_S942, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 2AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Unité de Médecine Ambulatoire (UMA), Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 3AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Service de Médecine Gériatrique, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 4AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Service de Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 5Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, EA 3412, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 6AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Service d’Ophtalmologie, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 7Service de Rhumatologie, AP-HM, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
  • 8CRMBM/CEMEREM, UMR CNRS 7339, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
  • 9AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Service d’Oncologie Médicale, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 10AP-HP, Hôpital Avicenne, Service de Radiologie Interventionnelle, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 11Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, INSERM UMR_S1162 Paris, Bobigny F-93009, Paris, France
  • 12Inserm U1138, Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, Paris F-75006, Paris, France
Received: July 28, 2020Accepted: September 9, 2020Published: October 30, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.104150

Copyright: © 2020 Falgarone et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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.