This meta-analysis demonstrates that chest radiograph has a low sensitivity and reasonable specificity compared with CT for detecting lung pathology in critically ill patients. The studies also investigating lung ultrasound, showed lung ultrasound to be clearly superior to chest radiograph in terms of sensitivity with similar specificity, thereby opting to be the first-line diagnostic tool in these patients. In the meta-analysis, we included 10 full-text studies, including 543 patients, and found that chest radiograph has an overall sensitivity of 49% (95% CI, 40–58%) and specificity of 92% (86–95%). In seven studies, where also lung ultrasound was studied, lung ultrasound had an overall sensitivity of 95% (92–96%) and specificity of 94% (90–97%).

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