Ghaemian N, Ghadimi R, Soraya S, Mouodi S. Chest computed tomography findings in more than 4,000 non-hospitalized suspected COVID-19 patients.
Caspian J Intern Med 2022;
13:187-192. [PMID:
35872675 PMCID:
PMC9272952 DOI:
10.22088/cjim.13.0.187]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2021] [Revised: 03/31/2021] [Accepted: 04/06/2021] [Indexed: 10/31/2022]
Abstract
Background
When the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak occurred, the infrastructure for definitive detection of the disease through real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was not yet available in many regions, and a large proportion of suspected patients were inevitably referred to radiology centers to provide a chest CT scan. This research was conducted to describe chest CT characteristics in patients who underwent chest CT during the first weeks of COVID-19 outbreak in Babol, Iran.
Methods
All non-hospitalized suspected COVID-19 patients referred to the state radiologic clinic to perform chest CT from March 8, 2020 to March 28, 2020 have been enrolled in this observational study. All CT scans were reviewed by a faculty member radiologist with approximately 20 years of experience.
Results
Totally, 2,207 (52.3%) men and 2016 (47.7%) women have been examined. Imaging characteristics in 2292 (54.3%) individuals illustrated a highly suggestive sign of COVID-19 infection while 1869 (44.3%) had a normal chest CT scan. 1813 cases (77.00%) had bilateral involvement and 541 cases (23.00%) were infected unilaterally; Also, 1727 (73.36%) patients had left-sided involvement. Lung field involvement in 2036 (86.49%) patients was less than 20%. Ground glass opacity had a sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, LR+ and LR- of 99%, 96%, 96%, 98%, 22 and 0.01, respectively, for categorization of a patient as a COVID-19 case. These values were 99%, 73%, 70%, 99%, 3.72% and 0.01%, respectively for consolidations.
Conclusion
Although, RT-PCR is still introduced as the gold standard method for definite diagnosis, diagnostic accuracy of chest CT in COVID-19 detection is considerable.
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