ArticleInternal and emergency medicine2017
Which method is best for an early accurate diagnosis of acute heart failure? Comparison between lung ultrasound, chest X-ray and NT pro-BNP performance: a prospective study.
Article in Internal and emergency medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diagnostic Accuracy of Point-of-Care Lung Ultrasonography and Chest Radiography in Adults With Symptoms Suggestive of Acute Decompensated Heart Failure: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2019Pooled it
- Article
- Point-of-care ultrasound for evaluating acute dyspnoea in emergency departments: Systematic review and meta-analysis.World journal of critical care medicine · 2026Article
- Lung Ultrasound Offers Fast and Reliable Exclusion of Heart Failure in the Emergency Department: A Prospective Diagnostic Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Lung Ultrasound Versus Chest Radiography for Acute Heart Failure: Impact of Heart Failure History and Pleural Effusion.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Association of the Serpine1 with the Obesity Paradox in Ischemic Heart Failure.Iranian journal of public health · 2025Article
- Accuracy of Lung Ultrasonography for Diagnosis of Heart Failure; a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Archives of academic emergency medicine · 2025Review
- Improvement initiatives in the diagnostic process of heart failure: a scoping review.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Review
- All B-lines are equal, but some B-lines are more equal than others.Journal of ultrasound · 2023Article
- Diagnosing Lung Abnormalities Related to Heart Failure in Chest Radiogram, Lung Ultrasound and Thoracic Computed Tomography.Advances in respiratory medicine · 2023Review
- Identification of hub genes in heart failure by integrated bioinformatics analysis and machine learning.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2023Article
- How and When to Use Lung Ultrasound in Patients with Heart Failure?Reviews in cardiovascular medicine · 2022Review
- The Value of Echocardiography Combined with NT-pro BNP Level in Assessment and Prognosis of Diastolic Heart Failure.Computational and mathematical methods in medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Lung Ultrasound Eight-Point Method in Diagnosing Acute Heart Failure in Emergency Patients with Acute Dyspnea: Diagnostic Accuracy and 72 h Monitoring.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2020Article
- Point-of-care ultrasound modalities in terms of diagnosing acute decompensated heart failure in emergency department; a diagnostic accuracy study.Internal and emergency medicine · 2020Article
- Diagnosis of Acute Heart Failure in the Emergency Department: An Evidence-Based Review.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2019Review
- Point-of-Care Ultrasound Identifies Decompensated Heart Failure in a Young Male with Methamphetamine-Associated Cardiomyopathy Presenting in Severe Sepsis to the Emergency Department.Case reports in emergency medicine · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Acute heart failure is a common condition among adults presenting with dyspnea in the Emergency Department (ED), still the diagnosis is challenging as objective standardized criteria are lacking. First line work-up, other then clinical findings, is nowadays made with lung ultrasound imaging study, chest X-ray study and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) level determination; however, it is not clear which is the best diagnostic test to be used and whether there is any real benefit for clinical judgement. We set up this study to compare the performances of these three diagnostic tools; furthermore, we combined them to find the best possible approach to dyspneic patients. This is a prospective observational study based in the ED. We enrolled adults presenting with dyspnea not trauma-related, they underwent lung ultrasound, and chest X-ray studies, and NT pro-BNP level determination. Then we compared the results with the diagnosis of acute heart failure established by an independent panel of experts. 236 patients were enrolled in the study. We find sensitivity and specificity for lung ultrasound of 57.73 and 87.97 %, for chest X-ray 74.49 and 86.26 %, for NT pro-BNP 97.59 and 27.56 %, respectively. Combining together the chest X-ray and lung ultrasound, we find the best overall performance with 84.69 % sensitivity, 77.69 % specificity and 87.07 % negative predictive value. From our results, we could not identify the "best test" to diagnose acute heart failure in an emergency setting, although we could suggest that a stepwise workup combining chest X-ray and lung ultrasound at first, then for those negative, a determination of NT pro-BNP assay would be a reasonable approach to the dyspneic patient.
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