Do we know the diagnostic properties of the tests used in COVID-19? A rapid review of recently published literature

Medwave

Vivienne C. Bachelet¹ 

[1] Escuela de Medicina, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), Santiago, Chile;

关键词: covid-19;    diagnosis;    testing;    sars-cov-2;   

DOI  :  10.5867/medwave.2020.03.7891

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

COVID-19 has brought death and disease to large parts of the world. Governments must deploy strategies to screen the population and subsequently isolate the suspect cases. Diagnostic testing is critical for epidemiological surveillance, but the accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) and clinical utility (impact on health outcomes) of the current diagnostic methods used for SARS-CoV-2 detection are not known. I ran a quick search in PubMed/MEDLINE to find studies on laboratory diagnostic tests and rapid viral diagnosis. After running the search strategies, I found 47 eligible articles that I discuss in this review, commenting on test characteristics and limitations. I did not find any papers that report on the clinical utility of the tests currently used for COVID-19 detection, meaning that we are fighting a battle without proper knowledge of the proportion of false negatives that current testing is resulting in. This shortcoming should not be overlooked as it might hamper national efforts to contain the pandemic through testing community-based suspect cases.

【 授权许可】

Unknown