Semiquantitative Chest computed tomography score in novel coronavirus-infected patients: its correlation with oxygen saturation and role in predicting oxygen therapy requirement

• Published in: The Egyptian journal of chest diseases and tuberculosis 2022-04, Vol.71 (2), p.143-148
• Main Authors: Arora, Abhishek, Komatlapalli, Srirammurthy, Thakur, Rajani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chest; computed tomography chest score; coronavirus disease 2019; CT imaging; Medical examination; Methods; oxygen; Oxygen therapy
• ISSN: 0422-7638; 2090-9950
• DOI: 10.4103/ecdt.ecdt_40_21

Context Quantitative and semiquantitative indicators of lung involvement in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) could help to stratify patients and thus help in triaging and speeding up the entire workflow in hospitals as patients with higher severity scores require early therapeutic intervention and critical care. Objective To calculate computed tomography (CT) severity score for COVID-19 infection based on lobar involvement by the disease and correlate this score with oxygen saturation levels (SpO2) of the patients and to further predict oxygen therapy requirement in patients with various scores. Settings and design This was a prospective study. Patients and methods This was a prospective study on 154 RT-PCR-proven novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)-infected (COVID-19) patients. SpO2 values of all the patients were obtained within 6 h of scan. All of the scans were reviewed, and the degree of lobar involvement was used to produce a semiquantitative CT score. Statistical analysis used Scatter plot correlation and receiver operator characteristic curve analysis were performed. Results CT score and SpO2 values of patients were plotted in the scatter plot chart, and Pearson correlation coefficient (r) was calculated, which was −0.836, suggesting a strong negative correlation. A total of 46 patients were given oxygen therapy, and they had SpO2 value less than or equal to 94%, with CT score ranging from 10 to 22. Receiver operator characteristic curve analysis was done to determine and reach an optimum cutoff value of 11 for oxygen therapy requirement, with a sensitivity and specificity of 95.83 and 95.58%, respectively. Conclusions CT score in COVID-19-infected patients has a strong negative correlation with SpO2, and it definitely helped to predict the requirement of oxygen therapy in our study.