Effectiveness of chest radiography, lung ultrasound and thoracic computed tomography in the diagnosis of congestive heart failure

Table 1 A proposed diagnostic alghoritm for the diagnosis of pulmonary edema

Lung ultrasound	Chest X-ray	Chest CT
First line in emergency and critically ill monitoring and to assess pulmonary congestion in typical clinical presentation	Second line to confirm doubtful cases in emergency or critically ill after haemodynamic recovery	Third step differential diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism

CT: Computed tomography.

Table 2 Diagnostic accuracy of chest X-ray and ultrasound in patients with heart failure

	Sensitivity
X-ray	56%
US	100%

Difference of patients showing radiologic and ultrasound (US) signs of congestive heart faliure (personal data not pubblished).