key: cord-0796825-tnz6k2z1
authors: Tran, Tu Anh; Cezar, Renaud; Frandon, Julien; Kabani, Sarah; Corbeau, Pierre
title: CT scan does not make a diagnosis of Covid-19: a cautionary case report()
date: 2020-09-02
journal: Int J Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.08.073
sha: bc3240f3bb8c0ed80fe96160299b58aeab48d17d
doc_id: 796825
cord_uid: tnz6k2z1

Here, we report the clinical case of a 12-year-old girl presenting with flu-like symptoms, cough, anosmia, ageusia, breathing difficulties, patchy ground glass opacities on TDM chest scan who turned out to be Coronavirus 229E-infected. This case must draw attention on the risk of false COVID-19 diagnosis when relying overly on CT scan imaging.

RT-PCR assays of nasopharyngeal samples at admittance and 24 hours later, were negative for SARS-CoV-2.

Multiplex PCR on rhynopharyngeal secretions was positive for Coronavirus 229E.

The patient responded favourably to treatment with 60 mg prednisolone and 5mg salbutamol in aerosol every two hours, which was progressively spaced out. The fever did not return, although the productive cough remained, and the patient was discharged two days after admittance.

In this case report, parents' anosmia and ageusia as well as chest scanner could have been misleading. Anosmia has been described for coronaviruses different from SARS-CoV-2 1 . According to Kim et al., scanner screening of patients with suspected COVID-19 in low-prevalence countries has a poor positive prediction value (1%-31%) 2 . Basing Covid-19 diagnosis strictly on clinical signs and imaging may lead to false positive diagnosis, resulting in inappropriate medical care and errors in contact tracing.

The study was carried out in accordance with the french guidelines and regulations.

This work has been funded by the University Hospital of Nîmes, France. 

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.