Strengths and Limitations of our study
To our knowledge, this is the straightforwardst semiquantitative method to predict lung diseases in late preterm and term infants. The assessment only needs to count on the number of scanning regions on the chest wall with ”high-risk” patterns, and these patterns are easy to discern. What’s more important is its reliability, that finding more than two regions with ”high-risk” patterns provides an 87.10% sensitivity and 88.02% specificity. LUS is radiationless and easy to perform, coupled with predictive reliability found in our study so that it can be used as an effective lung diseases screening tool between the delivery room and NICU. Nevertheless, there are some limitations to our study. Most significant is insufficient patients who were served with CPAP(23/74), MV(18/74), PS(29/74). This insufficiency made it difficult to draw a convincing conclusion to predict this advanced respiratory support. But this limitation can be improved in later research containing more patients with severe respiratory diseases. The second limitation is the possible inconsistency of images interpretation. Our research only has one LUS interpreter due to limited budget; this made it impossible for a consistency test between interpreters. This may lead to a variance in predictive reliability. This drawback may be corrected in later research by us or others. The last limitation we realized is its generalisability. Our participants are all late preterm and term infants, which means they have a lower incidence of lung diseases than the smaller preterms. However, because LUS is radiationless, easy to perform, and economical, we think it’s reasonable to perform LUS on every late preterm and term infants with respiratory symptoms. Besides, as the smaller preterms infants will receive more attention from physicians since their birth, their respiratory issues are less likely to be ignored than the late preterms and the terms.