Clinical radiology
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The aim of this study was to compare the performance of digital frontal radiographs vs digital lateral shoot-through radiographs for the diagnosis of pneumothoraces in supine patients. A total of 146 pairs of radiographs were performed on 32 ventilated patients on the Intensive Care Unit. ⋯ At least two out of three observers positively diagnosed a pneumothorax in 13/146 (8.9%) of the frontal radiographs compared to 43/146 (29.4%) of the lateral radiographs (P < 0.0001), but suboptimal images were obtained more often with lateral shoot-through radiographs than with frontal radiographs. We conclude that digital lateral shoot-through radiographs are significantly more sensitive than digital frontal radiographs for the diagnosis of pneumothoraces in supine patients.