Diagnostic efficacy of lung ultrasound in cardiogenic pulmonary edema: a systematic review and meta-analysis

L.-J. Dong, J. Li, W. Liu, A.-W. Ankaerjiang, B. Li, Y.-T. Chen, Z.-X. Yu

Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, Urumqi, China. yuzhaoxia3157@xjmu.edu.cn

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• Ultrasound

OBJECTIVE: This meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of lung ultrasound (LUS) in cardiogenic pulmonary edema.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: An electronic search of databases, including MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Web of Science, was performed to collect clinical studies on ultrasound diagnosis of cardiogenic pulmonary edema from inception to 23 March 2023. The number of patients with true-positive, true-negative, false-positive, and false-negative cardiogenic pulmonary edema diagnosed by LUS was collected, and the R package was used to analyze the diagnostic efficacy of LUS.

RESULTS: Nine pieces of literature were finally included with 2,097 participants, including 1,047 patients with cardiogenic heart failure. Across the nine included papers, the pooled sensitivity of LUS in the included studies was 0.92 (95% CI: 0.84, 0.97) with a maximum sensitivity of 0.99 (95% CI: 0.96 to 1.00) and a minimum of 0.59 (95% CI: 0.50, 0.68). The pooled specificity of the included studies was 0.87 (95% CI: 0. 82, 0.91) with a maximum specificity of 0.93 (95% CI: 0.90-0.95) and a minimum of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.67, 0.89). The pooled AUC was 0.93 (95% CI: 0.84 to 0.97), suggesting a high diagnostic value of LUS in cardiogenic pulmonary edema.

CONCLUSIONS: Lung ultrasound offers a good diagnostic efficacy for cardiogenic pulmonary edema. Further standardization of the examination method is required to provide a reference for the clinical use of LUS.

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