A low-dose chest CT protocol for the diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia: a prospective study

Purpose The increasing trend of chest CT utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates novel protocols with reduced dose and maintained diagnostic accuracy. We aimed to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of 30-mAs chest CT protocol in comparison with a 150-mAs standard-dose routine protocol for imaging of COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods Upon IRB approval, consecutive laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 patients aged 50 years or older who were referred for chest CT scan and had same-day normal CXR were invited to participate in this prospective study. First, a standard-dose chest CT scan (150 mAs) was performed. Only if typical COVID-19 pneumonia features were identified, then a low-dose CT (30 mAs) was done immediately. Diagnostic accuracy of low-dose and standard-dose CT in the detection of typical COVID-19 pneumonia features were compared. Results Twenty patients with a mean age of 64.20 +/- 13.8 were enrolled in the study. There was excellent intrareader agreement in detecting typical findings of COVID-19 pneumonia between low-dose and standard-dose (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.98-0.99,Pvalues < 0.001 all readers). The mean effective dose values in standard- and low-dose groups were 6.60 +/- 1.47 and 1.80 +/- 0.42 mSv, respectively. Also, absolute cancer risk per mean cumulative effective dose values obtained from the standard- and low-dose CT examinations were 2.71 x 10(-4)and 0.74 x 10(-4), respectively. Conclusions According to our study, it was found that proposed low-dose CT chest protocol is reliable in detecting COVID-19 pneumonia in daily practice with significant reduction in radiation dose and estimated cancer risk.