Proposal to protect patients and healthcare professionals undergoing elective surgery during COVID-19 outbreak

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability of COVID-19 Reporting and Data System (CO-RADS) scale on chest computerized tomography (CT) in addition to the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test in diagnosis of COVID-19 on patients who will undergo elective surgery to protect patients and healthcare professionals during the intense pandemic period and the correlation between CO-RADS scale and Total Severity Score (TSS). During the intensive pandemic until normalization, 253 patients aged ≥ 18 years who underwent elective surgery with two negative RT-PCR results within the last 5 days and CO-RADS scale ≤ 3 on chest CT were included in the study. Demographic characteristics, American Society of Anesthesiologists classification, type of anesthesia and surgery, department of clinic, chest CT findings, scale of CO-RADS and TSS on CT, patients’ postoperative hospital stay, follow-up time, and vital status (whether or not COVID-19 disease) at the hospital and discharge information were collected for each patient. RESULTS: The most frequently calculated CO-RADS score was found to be 1 (73.1%). It was followed by scale of CO-RADS 2 (20.9%). Regarding TSS, the most common TSS for the right and left lungs was 0 (91.7% and 92.5%, respectively). COVID-19 was not detected in any of the patients who were hospitalized for an average of 4.9 ± 6.4 days and followed-up for an average of 14.3 ± 8.2 days. It was observed that the CO-RADS score and TSS were positively and moderately correlated with each other (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: It was concluded that in early diagnostic of COVID-19, chest CT scans serve like a complementary diagnostic method in addition to RT-PCR testing to keep safe both the patients and health professionals and the scale of CO-RADS and TSS on CT are valuable in correlation with each other.