Revista de Técnicas Diagnósticas e Análise Biomédica

The Correlation between Chest CT and Quantitative RT-PCR Results for COVID-19 Diagnosing in Iran

Emran Esmaeilzadeh, Mehrdad Nasrollahzadeh Sabet , Mohammad Foad Heidari, Mohammad Khanalipou, MiladJafari Ashiani and Mohammad-Taher Moradi

The aim of this study was the assessment of chest CT and quantitative RT-PCR reliabilities in diagnosing COVID-19 pneumonia in Iran. This retrospective study was conducted on 740 COVID-19 suspected cases from 15 February to 5 April 2020, which had both CT and RT-PCR. The efficiency of chest CT for COVID-19 detection had been assessed in comparison to RT-PCR as the reference test. Among 740 cases, 637(86.1%) had positive chest CT and 455 patients (61.5%) had positive RT-PCR results. With RT-PCR as the reference test, the sensitivity of chest CT was 89.45%. According to the results, RT-PCR may produce initial false-negative results, suggesting that patients with positive chest CT but negative RT-PCR may be the disease carrier and should be isolated.