Abstract:

Objective

To preliminarily explore the clinicial application value of lung ultrasonography(LUS) in the imaging evaluation of pulmonary lesions in children with mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (MPP).

Methods

A total of 500 MPP children (270 males and 230 females) who were hospitalized in the Pediatrics Department of Tangdu Hospital between July 2023 and December 2023 and underwent LUS examination were retrospectively included.The relevant clinical data and ultrasound image data of the patients were analysed.

Results

The mean age of the 500 patients was (6.86±2.64 ) years, including 243 patients with mild MPP (48.6%,243/500), 221 with severe MPP (44.2%, 221/500), and 36 with critical MPP (7.2%, 36/500).Four hundred and ninety-four patients (98.8%) presented with positive signs of LUS, including alveolar-interstitial syndrome (25.6%,128/500), pulmonary consolidation (14.0%, 837/6000), pleural line changes (25.7%, 1540/6000), and pleural effusion (3.5%, 35/1000).Lung lesions of children with MPP were mainly concentrated in lung segments 5 and 6 (back).The LUS score of the patients was 6 (4, 9) and the score was significantly different among the patients with different severities of MPP ( P＜0.0001).Spearman correlation analysis shows that there was a significant moderate correlation between the severity of MPP and the LUS score (r_s=0.5000, P＜0.0001) and the maximum length of consolidated lung tissue (r_s=0.5880, P＜0.0001) in patients with MPP.

Conclusion

LUS may help to detect lesions such as alveolar-interstitial syndrome, pulmonary consolidation, and pleural effusion in patients with MPP, and the severity of the disease can be reflected by the LUS score and the maximum length of consolidated lung tissue.LUS is expected to provide a safe and simple imaging method for the clinical noninvasive assessment of lung injury in MPP.

Key words: Lung ultrasonography, Child, Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia, Alveolarinterstitial syndrome, Pulmonary consolidation