학술논문

Chest computed tomography in the diagnosis of COVID-19 in patients with false negative RT-PCR
Document Type
article
Source
einstein (São Paulo). January 2021 19
Subject
COVID-19
Coronavirus
Coronavirus infections
Pneumonia, viral
Tomography, X-ray computed
Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction
Language
English
ISSN
1679-4508
Abstract
Objective To evaluate the role of chest computed tomography in patients with COVID-19 who presented initial negative result in reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Methods A single-center, retrospective study that evaluated 39 patients with negative RT-PCR for COVID-19, who underwent chest computed tomography and had a final clinical or serological diagnosis of COVID-19. The visual tomographic classification was evaluated according to the Consensus of the Radiological Society of North America and software developed with artificial intelligence for automatic detection of findings and chance estimation of COVID-19. Results In the visual tomographic analysis, only one of them (3%) presented computed tomography classified as negative, 69% were classified as typical and 28% as indeterminate. In the evaluation using the software, only four (about 10%) had a probability of COVID-19 <25%. Conclusion Computed tomography can play an important role in management of suspected cases of COVID-19 with initial negative results in RT-PCR, especially considering those patients outside the ideal window for sample collection for RT-PCR.