Lung ultrasound to diagnose infectious pneumonia of newborns: A prospective multicenter study

Whether lung ultrasound (LUS) can be used for pathogenic diagnosis remains controversial. This study was conducted to clarify whether ultrasound has diagnostic value for etiology.

A total of 135 neonatal pneumonia patients with an identified pathogen were enrolled from the newborn intensive care units of 10 tertiary hospitals in China. The study ran from November 2020 to December 2021. The infants were divided into various groups according to pathogens, time of infection, gestational age, and disease severity. The distribution of pleural line abnormalities, B-line signs, and pulmonary consolidation, as well as the incidence of air bronchogram and pleural effusion based on LUS, were compared between these groups.

There were significant differences in pulmonary consolidation. The sensitivity and specificity of the diagnosis of severe pneumonia based on the extent of pulmonary consolidation were 83.3% and 85.2%, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the identification of mild or severe pneumonia based on the distribution of pulmonary consolidation was 0.776.

LUS has good performance in diagnosing and differentiating the severity of neonatal pneumonia but cannot be used for pathogenic identification in the early stages of pneumonia.