The diffusion of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) worldwide prompted the World Health Organization to declare the status of pandemic. The molecular diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection is based on the detection of viral RNA on different biological specimens. Unfortunately, the test may require several hours to be performed. In the present study, we evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of lung point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) for SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in a cohort of symptomatic patients admitted to one emergency department (ED) in a high-prevalence setting. This retrospective study enrolled all patients who visited one ED with suspected respiratory infection in March 2020. All the patients were tested (usually twice if the first was negative) for SARS-CoV-2 on ED admission. The reference standard was considered positive if at least one specimen was positive. If all the specimens tested negative, the reference was considered negative. Diagnostic accuracy was evaluated using sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive value. Of the 444 symptomatic patients who were admitted to the ED in the study period, the result of the lung POCUS test was available for 384 (86.5%). The sensitivity of the test was 92.0% (95% CI 88.2–94.9%), and the specificity was 64.9% (95% CI 54.6–74.4%). We observed a prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection of 74.7%. In this setting, the positive and negative predicted values were 88.6% (95% CI 84.4–92.0) and 73.3% (95% CI 62.6–82.2%), respectively. Lung POCUS is a sensitive first-line screening tool for ED patients presenting with symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11739-020-02524-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Our findings support the role of VeriStrat in the assistance in treatment selection of NSCLC patients for EGFR TKI therapy and its potential utility in treatment monitoring.

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Dear Editors, The deep, ongoing crisis of Emergency Medicine (EM) is, sadly, a well-recognised problem of the Italian National Health Care System. As beautifully outlined in the editorial by Coen et al.,1 the systematic disruption of Public Health Care, with progressively more significant cuts to the number of hospital beds and to primary care and community services has irreversibly changed the quality of care we can provide to our patients. [...]

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