einstein (São Paulo). 26/Oct/2021;19:eAO6363.

Chest computed tomography in the diagnosis of COVID-19 in patients with false negative RT-PCR

Eduardo Kaiser Ururahy Nunes Fonseca ORCID logo , Lorena Carneiro Ferreira ORCID logo , Bruna Melo Coelho Loureiro ORCID logo , Daniel Giunchetti Strabelli ORCID logo , Lucas de Pádua Gomes de Farias ORCID logo , Gabriel Abrantes de Queiroz ORCID logo , José Vitor Rassi Garcia ORCID logo , Renato de Freitas Teixeira ORCID logo , Victor Arcanjo Almeida Gama ORCID logo , Rodrigo Caruso Chate ORCID logo , Antonildes Nascimento Assunção Júnior ORCID logo , Márcio Valente Yamada Sawamura ORCID logo , Cesar Higa Nomura ORCID logo

DOI: 10.31744/einstein_journal/2021AO6363

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.

Chest computed tomography in the diagnosis of COVID-19 in patients with false negative RT-PCR