DISTRIBUTION AND ANALYSIS OF CHEST RADIOGRAPHIC FINDINGS IN COVID-19 POSITIVE SYMPTOMATIC AND ASYMPTOMATIC PATIENTS – ANALYSIS OF 668 PATIENTS IN INDIA

Abstract

Current COVID-19 radiological literature is dominated by CT and a detailed description of chest x-ray (CXR) appearances in relation to the disease time course is lacking. However, it poses a great challenge on the radiology department,as it is difficult to decontaminate entire CT suite(Zhao et al.,2020)11. This study is aimed to correlate clinical symptoms with the chest X-ray findings in COVID positive patients and to calculate the sensitivity and specificity of chest x ray in diagnosing COVID 19. The present study compares frequency and distribution of chest radiographic findings in COVID 19 positive symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Patients with a RT-PCR-positive results for COVID 19 infection were 668.Of these,437 were males (65.4%),230 females (34.4%) and 1 transgender (0.04%) with a mean age of 44 years (range 2–87 years). Only 18 CXRs were negative for radiological thoracic involvement (6.4%) among symptomatic patients (280). Among the baseline CXR of 668 patients, 375 (56.1%) were normal and 293 (43.8%) were abnormal. Sensitivity and specificity of CXR were 93.91% and 93.3% respectively. Positive and negative predictive values were 90.97% and 95.51% respectively. We found a statistically significant relationship between CXR severity score and age, symptoms, death (P<0.001).We even found significant relationship between age and symptoms, death of COVID positive patients (P<0.001). The relationship between CXR severity and gender, age and gender were not significant (P=0.539,P=0.864 respectively).