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,
P
values < 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 × 10
−4
and 0.74 × 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.
Highlights
CT severity score is a predictor of mortality in nonelderly COVID-19 pneumonia.
CT severity score more than 7.5 has a sensitivity of 83 % in predicting mortality.
The extent of disease should be relayed to the clinician for higher care priorities.
The recognition of knowledge and creativity as key strategic assets are very popular today. The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between Knowledge Management (KM) process and creativity among faculty members in the University. The research hypotheses were examined while considering KM process dimensions including Socialization, Combination, Externalization, and Internalization (SECI) and creativity based on demographic variables (age, gender, field of study, and employment status). This study was conducted using the correlation method. The statistical population consisted of 491 faculty members in the University of Isfahan from the year 2009 till 2010; from the 491, 85 were chosen by using stratified randomized sampling. The information gathering tools were researcher-made KM process Questionnaire with 26 items and Creativity Questionnaire with 23 items. 100 questionnaires were distributed to targeted population. Out of 100 questionnaires we received 85 completed questionnaires. This represents a response rate is quite suitable for this type of study. The results indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between KM process dimensions and creativity. In addition, there is no significant difference between faculty members' KM process considering the variables of age, gender, and field of study, besides there is no significant difference among faculty members' creativity considering age, field of study, and employment status.
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