Chest CT in COVID-19 patients: Structured vs conventional reporting

Abstract

Purpose To assess clinician satisfaction with structured (SR) and conventional (CR) radiological reports for chest CT exams in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, objectively comparing both reporting strategies. Method We retrospectively included 68 CTs (61 patients) with COVID-19. CRs were collected from the digital database while corresponding SRs were written by an expert radiologist, including a sign checklist, severity score index and final impressions. New CRs were prepared for a random subset (n = 10) of cases, to allow comparisons in reporting time and word count. CRs were analyzed to record severity score and final impressions inclusion. A random subset of 40 paired CRs and SRs was evaluated by two clinicians to assess, using a Likert scale, readability, comprehensiveness, comprehensibility, conciseness, clinical impact, and overall quality. Results Overall, 19/68 (28%) and 9/68 (13%) of CRs included final impressions and severity score, respectively. SR writing required significantly ( p < 0.001) less time (mean = 308 s; SD ± 60 s) compared to CRs (mean = 458 s; SD ± 72 s). On the other hand, word count was not significantly different ( p = 0.059, median = 100 and 106, range = 106-139 and 88-131 for SRs and CRs, respectively). Both clinicians expressed significantly (all p < 0.01) higher scores for SRs compared to CRs in all categories. Conclusions Our study supports the use of chest CT SRs in COVID-19 patients to improve referring physician satisfaction, optimizing reporting time and provide a greater amount and quality of information within the report.

Author response to the Letter to Editor on Chest CT in COVID-19 patients: Structured vs conventional reporting

“…We greatly appreciate the interest in our work as well as the keen observations and comments [1,2]. Firstly, we concur (as also already acknowledged in our article) that our results should be confirmed in the context of a quality improvement initiative to make the comparison more balanced and to better simulate real-life clinical practice, as previously done in different settings [3].…”

RSNA and BSTI grading systems of COVID-19 pneumonia: comparison of the diagnostic performance and interobserver agreement

“…The presence of positive radiological findings that can indicate the disease and thus may contribute to the detection of the disease by repeating the test in case of RT–PCR test false negativity can lead to an earlier treatment and therefore reduced morbidity and mortality. In addition, in a recently published study, it was reported that structured radiological (SR) reporting for chest CT is more reliable than conventional radiological (CR) reporting in COVID-19, as in many diseases [ 22 ].…”

Letter to Editor in response to Chest CT in COVID-19 patients: Structured vs conventional reporting

“…Being radiologists at a teaching government hospital with a hugepatient load, we read the article “Chest CT in COVID-19 patients: Structured vs conventional reporting” authored by Stanzione et al with great interest [ 1 ]. The article highlights the superior performance of structured reporting in confirmed cases of COVID 19 with higher satisfaction rate of clinicians.…”