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.