| Title: | A study of two ubiquitous inexpensive predictive markers for SARS-CoV-2 to guide testing in regions of depleted resources. |
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| Author(s): | R. Keane C. McGarvey A. Basirat C. Varghese |
| Institution: | Tallaght University Hospital |
| Poster: | Click to view poster |
| Category: | COVID-19 |
| Abstract: | The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been progressing globally since December 2019. This unforeseen outbreak is placing a significant stress on diagnostic laboratories. The negative impact of the delay in diagnosis of infectious diseases has been extensively studied. The aim of this retrospective, single centre study was to determine the efficacy of lymphopaenia and bilateral infiltrates on chest radiography as predictors of SARS-CoV-2 to provide guidance for the prioritisation of testing. 149 patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 admitted to a Level-4 hospital in Ireland from April 1st to April 14th 2020 were identified. 46 patients had both lymphopenia and bilateral infiltrates and 69.56% (n=32) of these patients were SARS-CoV-2 ‘detected’. These markers combined provided a sensitivity of 84.21% with specificity of 70.21% when using RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 as a reference. |
