2.4 Statistical analysis
Data were expressed as medians with interquartile ranges for continuous variables and as numbers with percentages for categorical variables. Among two groups, continuous and categorical variables were compared by using the Mann–Whitney U test and χ2 test or Fisher’s exact test respectively. P≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Statistical analysis was carried out by using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, verision 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, New York) software.
Results
manifestations and radiological features of the children LP patients
In our study, a total of 17 patients were included, with median age of 2 years[Interquartile Range, IQR(1.48~4.23)], in two of which had severe malnutrition and in one of which had obesity, the remaining 14 patients had no risk factors. The most frequent symptoms were cough (n= 14), fever (n=14) and tachypnea (n=7). Clinical visit data was availiable for the 17 children who finally were asymptomatic and presented normal radiological imagings. One patient taking sewing machine oil for 2 days had a severe pneumothorax, but a good clinical evolution. Corticosteroid and preventive antibiotics use were administered in 12 of the 17 children. Bronchoscopic lavage using normal saline was performed in all children. Characteristics of the patients are listed in the table 1.
Laboratory findings, such as arterial blood gas analysis(ABGA), peripheral blood investigations, bronchoscopic lavage fluid (BALF) analysis and CT features are presented in figure1 and table 2. Mild hypoxemia and hypocapnia were noted. BALF analysis was found in 8 of 17 patients who underwent bronchoscopy, and the increased neutrophilic granulocyte percentage was observed in BALF analysis and peripheral blood investigations.
In most cases, the lesions were multilobular; both lungs were equally involved; the right lung was more extensively involved than the left lung. On CT scan, the most common radiological features in the patients with ELP were bilateral areas of air-space consolidation(15, 93.75%) and poorly defined centrilobular nodules(13, 81.25%). The children had no pleural effusion, lymph-node enlargement or any other chest abnormality. The presence of ground-glass attenuation was observed in 11 cases, and ‘crazy-paving’ pattern(septal thickening) in 6 cases.