Agreement between chest radiography and high-resolution computed tomography in diagnosing dust-related interstitial lung fibrosis

Abstract

Although it has been suggested that high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scans can be obtained when plain radiographs are equivocal for the presence of interstitial lung fibrosis (ILF) caused by inhalation of dust, such as silica, asbestos fibres, etc., the specificity of the findings remains in question. The present study was carried out to compare the relative efficacy of chest radiography by conventional method and HRCT in evaluating ILF which included 22 workers exposed to fibrogenic dust, who were subjected to clinical examination, pulmonary function testing, posteroanterior chest radiography and HRCT. In the six subjects who had findings suggestive of ILF on HRCT, four had normal chest x-ray (CXR) while one each has been diagnosed as having tuberculosis and ILF on CXR. The agreement analysis between HRCT and CXR suggests that there was a poor agreement between HRCT and CXR (kappa = 0.34).