Current Diagnostic Techniques for Pneumonia: A Scoping Review

Kehkashan Kanwal1, Muhammad Asif2, Syed Ghufran Khalid3

  • 1College of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Ziauddin University, Karachi 75000, Pakistan.

PubMed

Insights

Accurate early detection of pneumonia is crucial, especially for vulnerable groups. This review categorizes pneumonia diagnostic techniques, highlighting the need for safer, non-invasive methods beyond current imaging and lab tests.

Area of Science:

  • Medical Diagnostics
  • Infectious Diseases
  • Respiratory Medicine

Background:

  • Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a leading cause of death, particularly in infants and the elderly.
  • Accurate and early diagnosis of pneumonia is challenging due to diverse causative agents.
  • Existing scoping reviews on pneumonia diagnostic techniques are limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To conduct a scoping review of diagnostic techniques for community-acquired pneumonia.
  • To categorize and summarize recent advancements in pneumonia diagnosis.
  • To identify gaps and future directions in pneumonia detection methods.

Main Methods:

  • Systematic search of three major electronic databases.
  • Screening of retrieved research articles on pneumonia diagnostics.
  • Categorization of diagnostic techniques into lab-based, imaging-based, acoustic-based, and physiological-measurement-based methods.

Main Results:

  • Research on pneumonia diagnosis is heavily focused on imaging-based techniques, especially post-COVID-19.
  • Chest X-rays and blood tests remain the most common clinical diagnostic tools.
  • Emerging non-invasive techniques using wearable sensors show promising diagnostic accuracy.

Conclusions:

  • There is a significant need for developing safe, non-invasive, and rapid pneumonia diagnostic tools.
  • Non-invasive physiological measurements via wearable sensors represent a potential future direction.
  • Further research and technological development are essential for point-of-care pneumonia diagnosis.

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