COMPARISON OF CT REPORTING SYSTEMS IN PATIENTS UNDERGOING THORAX COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY FOR COVID-19 PNEUMONIA.

Abstract

We aimed to compare three commonly used computed tomography (CT) reporting systems for COVID-19, i.e., Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Consensus, British Society of Thoracic Imaging (BSTI) Guideline, and Dutch Radiological Society Categorical CT Assesment Scheme: COVID-19 Reporting and Data System (CO-RADS). Three thousand thoracic CT scans taken consecutively because of COVID-19 suspicion, diagnosis or follow-up after admission to our hospital between March 2020 and May 2020 were studied. All CT examinations were assigned to the appropriate groups of the aferomentioned CT reporting systems and these systems were compared with each other. Thorax CT imaging did not reveal any findings indicative of infection (RSNA: 40.7%, BTSI: nonapplicable, and CO-RADS: 40.1%) in the vast majority of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (+) cases in all three reporting systems. The highest number of cases was included in the groups classified as typical/classic/CO-RADS 5 findings in all three reporting systems (RSNA: 213, BSTI: 212, and CO-RADS:101) in COVID-19 diagnosed cases with lung findings. There was no significant difference between PCR (+) and (-) cases with probable COVID-19 infection according to BSTI reporting system and CO-RADS 4 cases (30/23, p=0.381 and 22/19, p=0.245, respectively). In addition, typical thoracic CT findings were observed in RSNA: 70, BSTI: 71, CO-RADS: 71 individuals in all three classifications, but the PCR result was detected negative. When the three reporting systems were compared, we concluded that they did not show distinct advantage to each other and all three ensured that patients were properly classified with similar accuracy.