[Diagnostic accuracy of thoracic radiography in infectious pathology]

It is widely recognized that there may be various different reports on the same radiography, because of every single radiologist's subjective interpretation of semiological findings. The authors retrospectively reviewed the X-ray findings of 110 patients (294 chest radiographs) affected by infective pulmonary diseases. A new diagnosis was made, which was compared to the previous one. The quality of each radiograph was judged too, using a grade scale from 0 to 3. The authors confirmed the previous diagnoses in 65.30% of cases. Most of the discrepancies were in case of suspected hilar-mediastinal node involvement, and in case of evident previous pleuropathies. Statistical studies proved the quality of the radiograph not to largely affect the accuracy of the diagnosis in an extemporaneous and discontinuous judgement (P = 0.085).