• Olivier Peyrony, Carole Marbeuf-Gueye, Vy Truong, Marion Giroud, Clémentine Rivière, Khalil Khenissi, Léa Legay, Marie Simonetta, Arben Elezi, Alessandra Principe, Pierre Taboulet, Carl Ogereau, Mathieu Tourdjman, Sami Ellouze, and Jean-Paul Fontaine.
• Emergency Department, Saint-Louis Hospital, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France. Electronic address: o.peyrony@hotmail.fr.
• Ann Emerg Med. 2020 Oct 1; 76 (4): 405-412.

Study ObjectiveWe seek to describe the medical history and clinical findings of patients attending the emergency department (ED) with suspected coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and estimate the diagnostic accuracy of patients' characteristics for predicting COVID-19.MethodsWe prospectively enrolled all patients tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction in our ED from March 9, 2020, to April 4, 2020. We abstracted medical history, physical examination findings, and the clinical probability of COVID-19 (low, moderate, and high) rated by emergency physicians, depending on their clinical judgment. We assessed diagnostic accuracy of these characteristics for COVID-19 by calculating positive and negative likelihood ratios.ResultsWe included 391 patients, of whom 225 had positive test results for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction result was more likely to be negative when the emergency physician thought that clinical probability was low, and more likely to be positive when he or she thought that it was high. Patient-reported anosmia and the presence of bilateral B lines on lung ultrasonography had the highest positive likelihood ratio for the diagnosis of COVID-19 (7.58, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.36 to 24.36; and 7.09, 95% CI 2.77 to 18.12, respectively). The absence of a high clinical probability determined by the emergency physician and the absence of bilateral B lines on lung ultrasonography had the lowest negative likelihood ratio for the diagnosis of COVID-19 (0.33, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.43; and 0.26, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.45, respectively).ConclusionAnosmia, emergency physician estimate of high clinical probability, and bilateral B lines on lung ultrasonography increased the likelihood of identifying COVID-19 in patients presenting to the ED.Copyright © 2020 American College of Emergency Physicians. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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