Potencial utilidad del CT como marcador de persistencia de PCR positiva en pacientes con COVID-19

• Published in: Revista española de salud pública 2022 (96)
• Main Authors: Bautista Serrano, Inmaculada, Méndez González, Juan Carlos, Arias Arias, Ángel, Huertas Vaquero, María, Sánchez López, Javier, López Pintor, José María, Arribas Pérez, Fátima, Asencio Egea, Mª Ángeles, Gaitán Pitera, Jorge, Herráez Carrera, Oscar
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Subjects: CoV; Cycle threshold; Persistence in nasopharyngeal secretions; Persistencia en tracto nasofaríngeo; SARS
• ISSN: 1135-5727

BACKGROUND // One of the problems associated to SARS-CoV-2 was its persistence in nasopharyngeal tract. The existence of markers that help to predict this situation could be useful to management of the patients. The objective of this paper was to determine the relationship between the CT value from the initial PCR of patients with COVID-19 and the persistence of the infection. METHODS // It was performed an observational retrospective study of patients with positive PCR to SARS-CoV-2 attended in emergency department of a general hospital. Data about compatible symptoms, radiological findings and the CT value obtained with each PCR kit were collected. The control group (G0) included patients with a positive PCR followed by two negative PCR results (P-N-N), while problem group (G1) included patients with at least three consecutive positive PCR results (P-P-P). Chronic infections were discarded selecting only patients with negative serology, and only were included those whose PCR were separated by a minimum of five and maximum of twenty days. The comparison between the study groups was carried out using the t-student test for quantitative variables and the χ2 test for qualitative variables. RESULTS // The mean CT value were 30.8 and 21.5 (p