Background
pneumonia, fever, non-traumatic pulmonary disease, CAP, undifferentiated febrile, Pneumonia, febrile
PNEUMONIA, NEUTROPENIC FEVER, PNEUMONIA, PATHOLOGY, COMMUNITY-ACQUIRED PNEUMONIA
The classic clinical presentation of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a febrile patient with respiratory signs and symptoms. In practice, however, the presentation of pneumonia varies. The symptoms and signs that can accompany pneumonia are non-specific, and no single symptom, sign, or combination thereof is a reliable predictor of the illness [To date, chest X-ray (CXR) is the initial imaging modality of choice for detecting chest pathology. Although readily available, the diagnostic accuracy of CXR is limited [Pneumonia’s heterogeneous clinical presentation and, to some extent, the limited value of clinical diagnostic signs raise the question of whether pulmonary imaging should be considered in undifferentiated febrile patients who do not exhibit obvious respiratory symptoms. In four studies investigating either patients with neutropenic fever, with a fever of unknown origin, or febrile patients at the ED without respiratory symptoms, the yield of CXR varied between 2 and 5% [We recently reported the results of the OPTIMACT trial, a multicentre, non-inferiority, randomized clinical trial evaluating the health outcomes effect of replacing CXR by ULDCT in the diagnostic work-up of patients suspected of non-traumatic pulmonary disease at the ED [