Agreement between chest radiograph and computed tomography for the diagnosis of acute respiratory distress syndrome: A retrospective observational study

Background

The presence of bilateral lung infiltrates on chest imaging is a mandatory clinical criterion for the diagnosis of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Although lung infiltrates are usually identified on chest radiograph in clinical practice, chest computed tomography (CT) outperforms chest radiograph for the diagnosis of lung infiltrates. We hypothesized that the performance of chest radiograph for the diagnosis of ARDS, as compared to chest CT as reference, is limited.