Emergency departments in the detection of COVID-19 cases; multi-centered data from Turkey

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study is to examine the story, clinical findings, initial computed tomography (CT) findings and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results and evaluate the consistency of this data. METHODS: This is a multi-center retrospective study and out of patients aged 18 and over who were evaluated for COVID-19 in the emergency department between 01.04.2020 and 01.05.2020. Data regarding the patients such as age, gender, comorbidity, COVID-19 contact, symptoms, vital findings, laboratory parameters, CT findings, hospitalization status and case fatality rate (CFR) were examined. RESULTS: 62.4% of 687 patients were male, the mean age was 49.7.49.9% of patients had at least one comorbidity. The most common symptoms were fever (61.6%), cough (56.5%), dyspnea (33.2%). 33.9% of patients had RT-PCR positivity, 69.9% had CT positivity, and 72.5% had both RT-PCR and CT positivity. Sensitivity of CT was 72.5, its specificity was 31.5% and its accuracy was 45.5%. Most common CT pattern was pure GGO (47.9%). CFR was 6% and it was significantly higher in both RT-PCR and CT positive patients (p=0.01). According to logistic regression analysis, male gender (p=0.037;OR: 0.385;95% CI, 0.157-0.943), higher age (p=0.000;OR: 1.068;95% CI, 1.031-1.106) and comorbidity presence (p=0.008;OR: 5.374;95% CI, 1.539-7.618) were found to be associated with mortality. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In our study, we found that using RT-PCR and CT together and supporting them with clinical data was the strongest approach in the diagnosis of COVID-19 cases.