Introduction:  Early diagnosis of pneumothorax is essential in reducing complications and fatalities among trauma patients. Studies have shown that chest ultrasonography (CUS) is reliable for diagnosing this condition. This review study aims to evaluate the accuracy of CUS and chest radiography (CXR) in detecting pneumothorax in patients who have suffered trauma.
Methods: PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and ISI were searched between January 1, 2013, and January 1, 2024. Also, a manual search using Google Scholar and Google was conducted. Published systematic review articles in the English language were included. After removing any duplicate records, two researchers independently searched and screened the titles and abstracts of the remaining articles. The researchers assessed full-text papers, making sure they met the inclusion criteria. Any differences in opinion were resolved with the help of another investigator.
Results:  Overall, 3215 records were discovered. After assessing their eligibility and eliminating duplicates, 145 records were chosen for a detailed textual study. Nine systematic review studies from this group were selected for the final assessment. Studies demonstrated that the sensitivity of CUS in diagnosing pneumothorax ranges from 74% to 91%, while the specificity ranges from 96% to 99%. The sensitivity of CXR in diagnosing pneumothorax ranges from 40% to 52%, while the specificity ranges from 99% to 99%.
Conclusion: According to the current study, ultrasonography is more precise than supine CXR in detecting pneumothorax. The results indicate that CUS has superior diagnostic accuracy compared to supine CXR for diagnosing pneumothorax, making it the preferred alternative.