Abstract
Despite reported favorable diagnostic accuracy of lung ultrasound (LUS) for diagnosing pneumonia, most evidence came from emergency, inpatient, or intensive care settings rather than ambulatory or primary care populations and was based on the assumption of error-free reference standards.1 Therefore, we evaluated the diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility of LUS for suspected pneumonia in ambulatory and primary care settings, while exploring the effect of imperfect reference standards.With the protocol registered in PROSPERO (CRD420261360739), we conducted a systematic review and diagnostic test accuracy meta-analysis following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and