Improved Interobserver Reliability in Diagnosing and Staging Lesions of COVID-19 Between Radiologist and Emergency Medicine Physicians After an Online Course

Background: Chest radiographs are the most basic and readily available imaging modality for visualizing the lungs and are potentially useful for describing the disease severity in patients showing respiratory symptoms in COVID-19 patients. The early diagnosis of COVID-19 features on radiography helps in triaging and starting treatment. Material and methods: Our study consisted of 145 radiographs, and these were reported by two radiologists, two emergency physicians and one intern working in the Emergency department. The scores given by them were correlated. A targeted short lecture for the scoring was imparted and after a sufficient latent period the scoring of chest radiographs was done again, and the scores correlated and compared. Results: We observed agreement between radiologists with emergency medicine physicians was “none to slight” to “fair,” before the dedicated online teaching course. Following the meeting, there was an increase in interobserver agreement in-between radiologists and between radiologists and emergency medicine physicians. Conclusions: We propose a focused online meeting, targeted at explaining radiological features of a specific pathology, in a pandemic situation like COVID, to our clinical counterparts in the emergency medicine department can help in increasing their interpretation skills. This can directly benefit triaging, admission/discharge and monitoring of the status of patients, in intensive care units and emergency medicine. This also helps in allaying the anxiety, while waiting for a final report from the Radiologist.