Lung Ultrasonography in Ruling Out COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers in Two Italian Emergency Departments: A Multicenter Study

Objective: The low sensitivity of the real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test on nasopharyngeal swab for SARS-CoV2 virus could cause infections among health care professionals and be a source viral spread. aim this study was to verify whether lung ultrasonography (LUS) had negative predictive value (NPV) high enough rule out coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in cohort employees, working emergency departments (EDs). Materials Methods: A multicenter prospective observational conducted two EDs Northeast Italy. An adjudication committee established definitive diagnosis COVID-19. Results: enrolled 155 possible patient cases (two true positives). Twenty-one employees presented with suggestive symptoms rRT-PCR positive one patients. LUS COVID-19 pneumonia four diagnostic accuracy 98.7% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 95.4%–99.8%). NPV 100% CI 100%–100%). Conclusion: has excluding COVID-19-related who were exposed virus.