1. How to diagnose COVID-19 in family practice? Usability of complete blood count as a COVID-19 diagnostic tool: a cross-sectional study in Turkey.
- Author
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Bayraktar M, Tekin E, and Kocak MN
- Subjects
- Humans, Male, Adult, Middle Aged, Female, Retrospective Studies, Cross-Sectional Studies, Family Practice, Turkey epidemiology, Blood Cell Count, Lymphocytes, Neutrophils, COVID-19 Testing, COVID-19 diagnosis
- Abstract
Objective: COVID-19 is currently diagnosed in hospital settings. An easy and practical diagnosis of COVID-19 is needed in primary care. For this purpose, the usability of complete blood count in the diagnosis of COVID-19 was investigated., Design: Retrospective, cross-sectional study., Setting: Single-centre study in a tertiary university hospital in Erzurum, Turkey., Participants: Between March 2020 and February 2021, patients aged 18-70 years who applied to the hospital and underwent both complete blood count and reverse-transcription-PCR tests for COVID-19 were included and compared. Conditions affecting the test parameters (oncological-haematological conditions, chronic diseases, drug usage) were excluded., Outcome Measure: The complete blood count and COVID-19 results of eligible patients identified using diagnostic codes [U07.3 (COVID-19) or Z03.8 (observation for other suspected diseases and conditions)] were investigated., Results: Of the 978 patients included, 39.4% (n=385) were positive for COVID-19 and 60.6% (n=593) were negative. The mean age was 41.5±14.5 years, and 53.9% (n=527) were male. COVID-19-positive patients were found to have significantly lower leucocyte, neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, basophil, platelet and immature granulocyte (IG) values (p<0.001). Neutrophil/lymphocyte, neutrophil/monocyte and IG/lymphocyte ratios were also found to be significantly decreased (p<0.001). With logistic regression analysis, low lymphocyte count (OR 0.695; 95% CI 0.597 to 0.809) and low red cell distribution width-coefficient of variation (RDW-CV) (OR 0.887; 95% CI 0.818 to 0.962) were significantly associated with COVID-19 positivity. In receiver operating characteristic analysis, the cut-off values of lymphocyte and RDW-CV were 0.745 and 12.35, respectively., Conclusion: Although our study was designed retrospectively and reflects regional data, it is important to determine that low lymphocyte count and RDW-CV can be used in the diagnosis of COVID-19 in primary care., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)
- Published
- 2023
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