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Lung Ultrasound Will Soon Replace Chest Radiography in the Diagnosis of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia

  • Respiratory Infections (F Arnold, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Acute community-acquired pneumonia should be diagnosed early to avoid most complications. The common diagnostic tools were represented by blood tests and chest X-ray with CT scan coming as a second-line exploration. The presence of air in the pulmonary parenchyma has long been thought of as not explorable by ultrasound. However, since the 1990s, several teams have described a semiology of ultrasonography of pulmonary diseases. Moreover, the safety of the technique and the development of mobile and ultra-portable devices have offered it as a first-line examination by a non-radiologist physician. The authors describe in this article ultrasonography as a way of learning the technique, and the main results observed in the literature. In conclusion, they propose it as the first-line examination instead of chest X-ray, and to reserve chest CT scan for complicated cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emergency, Anesthesiology and Critical Care Department, Lourdes Hospital, 2 Avenue Alexandre Marqui, Lourdes, France

    Jean-Eudes Bourcier, Sergiu Braga & Didier Garnier

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  1. Jean-Eudes Bourcier
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  2. Sergiu Braga
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  3. Didier Garnier
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Correspondence to Jean-Eudes Bourcier.

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Drs Bourcier, Braga, and Garnier have no conflicts of interests to declare.

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The authors of this article state that lung studies have been done and used for reference in this paper.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Respiratory Infections

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Bourcier, JE., Braga, S. & Garnier, D. Lung Ultrasound Will Soon Replace Chest Radiography in the Diagnosis of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia. Curr Infect Dis Rep 18, 43 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-016-0550-9

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