The Feasibility of Bedside Ultrasound in Confirmation of Endotracheal Tube Position in Neonates Compared with CXR

Abstract

Background: Endotracheal intubation is a common procedure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Rapid and accurate confirmation of the endotracheal tube (ETT) position is critical . Routinely CXR is used for evaluation of ETT position that has some disadvantages . So there has been a considerable interest to find alternative modality with minimal complication and acceptable accuracy. Objectives: the purpose of our study is the evaluation of ultrasound efficacy in confirmation of ETT position in neonates comparison to CXR.Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 66 intubated neonates in NICU of Ali -Asghar children Hospital, between January 2018 and January 2019. To determine the ETT position, within 2-4 hours after CXR, each neonate had a bedside ultrasound (US) with a high-frequency linear transducer. Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, negative predicted value (NPV), positive predicted value (PPV) and Kappa agreement coefficient was used to compare the US and CXR results. Results: Sixty-six intubated neonates included in this study had a mean gestational age of 34.98 ±3.7 weeks and mean birth weight of 2284.7 ± 915g. US images were taken a mean of 3 ±0.6 h after CXR. The ETT was visualized by the US in all newborns examined.US revealed a sensitivity of 88% (95% CI, 68.78% to 97.45%), specificity of 84 % (95% CI, 63.92% 95.46%), PPV of 84.62% (95% CI, 68.89% to 93.18%), NPV of 87.50 % (95% CI, 70.49% to 95.35%), diagnostic accuracy of 86%(95% CI, 73.26% to 94.18%), positive likelihood ratio of 5.50 (95% CI 2.21 to 13.66), and Negative Likelihood Ratio of 0.14 (95% CI 0.05 to 0.46) compared to chest radiography. Overall, the Kappa value showed very good agreement in confirming the correct position of the tracheal tube placement (Kappa coefficient 0.72, p-value <0.001).The mean time taken for confirmation of ETT position by US 4 minutes and by CXR was 20 minutes.Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrate ultrasound has acceptable accuracy for confirmation of ETT position in neonates and is a safer and faster method in comparison to CXR .