ANALYSIS OF SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY OF COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY AND REVERSE TRANSCRIPTASE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION IN DIAGNOSIS OF COVID-19- A REVIEW ARTICLE

Introduction: The coronavirus comes from the word "corona" which means "crown" in Latin. Coronavirus (CoVs) belongs to a very diverse class of enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses. It causes many respiratory infections in humans, ranging from a mild cold to severe respiratory distress syndrome. To ensure a better and healthier prognosis in individual infected with COVID-19, a prompt diagnosing technique and treatment is very essential. The role of chest computed tomography (CT) and real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is essential in the early diagnosis of COVID-19 patients. However, because of low efficiency of the detection of viral nucleic acids, this method shows a lack of clinical performance for the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease. The goal of the study is to examine the clinical performance of CT and RT-PCR and assess the diagnostic value of chest CT scan and RT-PCR in COVID-19 patients suspected of having the virus.

Methods: The data/information for review article was collected from different literature available on Google Scholar, PubMed, Scihub and Radiopedia. A profound study of all the key words was conducted and relevant information was avidly collected. Technical aspect of the study was cited specifically from radiology literature.

Results: Of the 147 studies; 115 were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, we found 60 studies after selecting the title and abstract.  A full-text evaluation of 45 accepted studies found 1766 patients. A total of 1,766 patients underwent CT scans, of which 1,452 patients had COVID-19 positive chest CT and 959 of 1713 PCR results were positive. Recent research on diagnostic performance of CT chest and RT-PCR have been widely reported from various countries, according to the findings.

Conclusion: In this review article, we compare two diagnostic modalities computed tomography (Radiology) and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (MLT). The best modality for COVID-19 detection is CT scan because we review different published articles which are mentioned in the result. The sensitivity and specificity CT scan modality is more than PCR.