Patients’ characteristics
23 acutely ill children with pro-BNP> 300 pg/mL and suspected pulmonary congestion were enrolled. Of these: -8 diagnosed with systemic inflammatory disease/sepsis (with a median age of 30.5 months); -7 diagnosed with heart disease (with a median age of 147 months); -8 diagnosed with systemic inflammatory disease/sepsis and heart disease (with median age of 127.5 months).
The descriptive analysis of the main epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the study population (acutely ill children ), as well as the main diagnostic and laboratory investigations performed on these patients, evaluated according to the three diagnostic sub-category, are described in detail in Table 1.
In addition, the main epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the study population (acutely ill children ), as well as the main diagnostic and laboratory investigations performed on these patients, were assessed according to pro-BNP level group (lower or higher than the value of 1000 pg / ml) and are detailed in Table 2. The results of the laboratory and other diagnostic investigations were not able to discriminate significantly between the two groups. The only significant difference is that patients who are in the pro-BNP> 1000 group have a significantly higher frequency of prior cardiac disease (p = 0.007), have significantly higher troponin (p = 0.002), and among the characteristics of echocardiograms have more frequently pathological findings with signs of overload and / or decompensation (92.86% versus 0; p = 0.002). Furthermore, 77.78% of patients belonging to the pro-BNP <1000 group have a diagnosis of systemic inflammatory disease/sepsis (p = 0.003).
Finally, we compared the LUS results of the study population (acutely ill children ) with those of a sample of patients suffering from bronchiolitis and a sample of healthy patients. In particular, we analyzed the epidemiological and clinical data - as well as the LUS findings - of 53 patients with bronchiolitis (with a median age of 2 months) and of 33 healthy patients (with a median age of 7 months). The main epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the three populations are detailed in Table 3.