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Medical AI Inquiry: You was designed to assist in medical decision-making based on the provided user questions. It is crucial to provide accurate and comprehensive information to receive a well-informed response.  Labels: BACKGROUND, METHODS, RESULTS. Meshes: Adolescent, Bronchoscopy, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Infant, Male, Predictive Value of Tests, Retrospective Studies, Tomography, X-Ray Computed, Tuberculosis, Pulmonary, Unnecessary Procedures.
user
Could CT scan avoid unnecessary flexible bronchoscopy in children with active pulmonary tuberculosis? Context: Systematic flexible bronchoscopy is advocated in the initial management of childhood pulmonary tuberculosis. Our aim was to describe and to compare the systematic flexible bronchoscopy findings of 53 children (6.5 + or - 4.4 years; 52.8% boys) with active pulmonary tuberculosis to their initial clinical and radiological (chest x-ray, n=53; CT, n=45) features in an 11-year retrospective study. Flexible bronchoscopy was normal in 51% of cases. A severe tracheobronchial involvement (extrinsic compression>50% or obstructive endoluminal mass>25% of the lumen) was found in 10 patients. Flexible bronchoscopy guided therapy in 13 cases (steroids n=12, bronchoscopic extraction of a granuloma n=1) and permitted isolation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in three patients (5.7%). No useful information was obtained by flexible bronchoscopy in 73.5% of cases. No correlation was found between flexible bronchoscopy findings and clinical features or x-ray findings. Conversely, a strong correlation was found between severe bronchoscopic involvement and tracheobronchial luminal narrowing on CT. The CT negative predictive value was 100% (95% CI 91% to 100%). Based on CT results, flexible bronchoscopy could have been avoided in about 60% of our patients.
assistant
Flexible bronchoscopy remains a very relevant tool in the diagnostic and therapeutic management of childhood pulmonary tuberculosis but resulted in treatment modification or microbiological proof in a minority of our patients. We propose that flexible bronchoscopy in children with pulmonary tuberculosis be limited to those who show tracheobronchial luminal narrowing on an initial CT scan.