Emergency Medicine Consultant, Emergency Medicine Department, King Fahd Hospital of the University, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University.
ER Department, King Fahad University Hospital, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Med Arch. 2023;77(4):263-267. doi: 10.5455/medarh.2023.77.263-267.
Fast and accurate COVID-19 identification is important to population and epidemic monitoring in hospitals. Visual triage or respiratory triage should be efficient and utilized as visual clues to alert HCWs on the case definitions.
This study aims to evaluate the diagnostic value of the respiratory triage for COVID-19 infections and to evaluate the efficacy of the MOH triage tool in identifying low risk patients.
A single-center retrospective chart review that was conducted at King Fahd Hospital of the University (KFHU), Khober, KSA on all adult patients admitted to the hospital through the ED. The visual triage checklist comprises two main sections, with one focused on the risk of exposure and the other related to patient clinical signs and symptoms, each with a defined score where any score ≥ 4 will need to isolate and assessed by the physician while a score of less than 4 means that the patient can be admitted with other patients. The hospital swabbed all admitted patients regardless of their score. We compared their PCR result with their case definition score. The collected data was entered and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL, USA) version 23.
The study included 7258 participants. 20% of participants aged between 21 to 30 years old, 52.2% of sample were females, and 78% were Saudi nationality. Visual triage score was less than 4 in n= 4745 participants (65.4%) and 4 or more in n= 2513 (34.6%). The test had sensitivity of 75% and specificity 21%.
Most studies shows that COVID 19 has an infectivity rate of 18 to 30%. Based on this low sensitivity result, using the screening tool alone puts patients and HCWs at risk of getting infected with COVID 19.
快速准确地识别 COVID-19 对于医院的人群和疫情监测非常重要。目视分诊或呼吸分诊应该是有效的，并利用其视觉线索来提醒医护人员注意病例定义。
本研究旨在评估呼吸分诊对 COVID-19 感染的诊断价值，并评估 MOH 分诊工具在识别低风险患者方面的效果。
这是一项在沙特阿拉伯库巴的法赫德国王大学医院（KFHU）进行的单中心回顾性图表审查，对所有通过急诊部入院的成年患者进行评估。目视分诊检查表包括两个主要部分，一部分侧重于暴露风险，另一部分与患者的临床体征和症状有关，每个部分都有一个定义的分数，任何分数≥4 分的患者都需要隔离并由医生评估，而分数低于 4 分的患者则可以与其他患者一起入院。医院对所有入院患者进行了拭子检测，无论他们的分数如何。我们将他们的 PCR 结果与病例定义分数进行了比较。收集的数据使用社会科学统计软件包（SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL, USA）版本 23 进行输入和分析。
该研究共纳入 7258 名参与者。20%的参与者年龄在 21 至 30 岁之间，52.2%的样本为女性，78%为沙特国籍。4745 名参与者（65.4%）的目视分诊评分低于 4 分，2513 名（34.6%）评分大于等于 4 分。该测试的敏感性为 75%，特异性为 21%。
大多数研究表明，COVID-19 的感染率为 18%至 30%。基于这一低敏感性结果，仅使用筛查工具会使患者和医护人员面临感染 COVID-19 的风险。
