| Context: Due to their availability and rapid turnaround time, the supplemental role of chest computed
tomography (CT) scan and real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is growing for early diagnosis of
patients with COVID-19. However, due to the low efficiency of viral nucleic acid detection as well as low
specificity of chest CT scan for detecting COVID-19 pneumonia, both methods show incomplete clinical
performance for proper COVID-19 disease diagnosis. The purpose of this review was to compare the clinical
performance of two methods and to evaluate the diagnostic values of chest CT scan and RT-PCR for suspected
COVID-19 patients.
Evidence acquisition: We systemically searched PubMed, Cochrane, from December 2019 to the end of
April 2020. Clinical research papers in goal fields that reviewed COVID-19 patients, whom chest CT scan,
and PCR testing were performed together were included.
Results: In total, we found 536 studies; and finally168 studies were shortlisted. Following title and abstract
screening, we reached 83 studies based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Conducted screen by the full
text covered 28 studies, which led to data extraction. By the full-text assessment of 28 included studies, we
found 4486 assessed patients. Totally, 3164 patients had positive chest CT scans, and 3014 patients had
positive PCR results. The finding showed that recent studies on the diagnostic performance of RT-PCR and
chest CT scan have commonly been reported from China.
Conclusion: The results from this review indicate that the chest CT scan should be used for symptomatic
and hospitalized patients. Moreover, chest CT scan should not be used as a primary screening tool for
diagnosing COVID-19. Application of RT-PCR as the first line diagnosis is still recommended. |