POCUS Examination of the Mediastinum in Children: A Simplified and Standardized Protocol for Pulmonary Tuberculosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) is increasingly recognized as a valuable tool for mediastinal assessment in children, particularly in resource-limited settings where advanced radiological options such as computed tomography (CT) scans are often unavailable. In high-income countries, POCUS is gaining traction as a complementary imaging method, offering a safer, radiation-free alternative. Methods: To overcome the operator-dependent nature of mediastinal POCUS, a standardized protocol was developed. The protocol includes clear techniques and detailed descriptions of normal and pathological findings, aiming to enhance consistency and diagnostic accuracy. Results: The standardized protocol improved reliability in mediastinal POCUS assessments, especially in the context of paediatric pulmonary tuberculosis, a condition often marked by lymph node involvement. Given the challenges of obtaining respiratory samples in children and their typically low diagnostic yield, POCUS emerged as a particularly suitable diagnostic modality. Conclusions: Mediastinal POCUS, guided by a standardized protocol, represents a safe, affordable, point-of-care, and non-ionizing option for identifying mediastinal lymphadenopathy. Its application holds promise for improving the diagnosis of paediatric tuberculosis, especially in settings with limited access to advanced radiological imaging.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".