Diagnostic performance of transthoracic ultrasound in patients with pulmonary embolism

Abstract

Background Pulmonary embolism (PE) is an acute, significant, and life-threatening condition. Transthoracic ultrasound (TUS) is one of the noninvasive diagnostic modalities that has been presented for detection of numerous chest disorders as well as PE. Objectives The goal of this work was to estimate the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of bedside TUS in PE detection. Patients and methods Fifty patients with moderate-to-high clinical suspicion of PE were examined by TUS. Diagnosis of PE depended on clinical suspicion and was confirmed by computed tomography pulmonary angiography. Results Most of the lesions related to PE and detected by US examination were on the right side (60%) and posterior lower lobe (70%) with predominance of A profile. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative, and positive predictive values of TUS in diagnosis of PE were 93.3, 65, 82, 86.7, and 80%, respectively. Conclusion TUS is an important diagnostic tool as a noninvasive bedside test in detecting PE principally for critically ill or unmoving patients with high sensitivity and moderate specificity.