Rational Use of CT-Scan for the Diagnosis of Pneumonia: Comparative Accuracy of Different Strategies

Diagnosing pneumonia in emergency departments is challenging because the accuracy of symptoms, signs and laboratory tests is limited. As a confirmation test, chest X-ray has significant limitations and is outperformed by CT-scan. However, obtaining a CT-scan in all cases of suspected pneumonia has significant drawbacks. We used a cohort of 200 consecutive elderly patients admitted to the hospital for suspected pneumonia to build a simple prediction score, which was used to determine indication for performing a CT-scan. The reference diagnosis was adjudicated by experts considering all available data, including evolution until discharge and CT scan in all patients. Results were externally validated in a second cohort of 319 patients. Pneumonia was confirmed in 133 patients (67%). Area under the receiver operator curve (AUROC) of physician evaluation was 0.55 (0.46-0.64). The score incorporated four variables independently predicting confirmed pneumonia: male gender, acute cough, C-reactive protein >70 mg/L, and urea <7 mmol/L. AUROC of the score was 0.68 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.60-0.76). When a CT-scan was obtained for patients at low or intermediate predicted risk (108 patients, 54% of the cohort), AUROC was 0.71 (0.63-0.80) and 0.69 (0.64-0.74) in the derivation and validation cohort, respectively. A simple prediction score for pneumonia had moderate accuracy and could guide the performance of a CT-scan.