Computer-Aided Medical Microbiology Monitoring Tool: A Strategy to Adapt to the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic and That Highlights RT-PCR Consistency.

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State: Public
Version: author
License: CC BY 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_6B431B99FDA3
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Computer-Aided Medical Microbiology Monitoring Tool: A Strategy to Adapt to the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic and That Highlights RT-PCR Consistency.
Journal
Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology
Author(s)
Mueller L., Scherz V., Greub G., Jaton K., Opota O.
ISSN
2235-2988 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
2235-2988
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2021
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
11
Pages
594577
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: epublish
Abstract
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, important health and regulatory decisions relied on SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results. Our diagnostic laboratory faced a rapid increase in the number of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR. To maintain a rapid turnaround time, we moved from a case-by-case validation of RT-PCR results to an automated validation and immediate results transmission to clinicians. A quality-monitoring tool based on a homemade algorithm coded in R was developed, to preserve high quality and to track aberrant results. We present the results of this quality-monitoring tool applied to 35,137 RT-PCR results. Patients tested several times led to 4,939 pairwise comparisons: 88% concordant and 12% discrepant. The algorithm automatically solved 428 out of 573 discrepancies. The most likely explanation for these 573 discrepancies was related for 44.9% of the situations to the clinical evolution of the disease, 27.9% to preanalytical factors, and 25.3% to stochasticity of the assay. Finally, 11 discrepant results could not be explained, including 8 for which clinical data was not available. For patients repeatedly tested on the same day, the second result confirmed a first negative or positive result in 99.2% or 88.9% of cases, respectively. The implemented quality-monitoring strategy allowed to: i) assist the investigation of discrepant results ii) focus the attention of medical microbiologists onto results requiring a specific expertise and iii) maintain an acceptable turnaround time. This work highlights the high RT-PCR consistency for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 and the necessity for automated processes to handle a huge number of microbiological results while preserving quality.
Keywords
COVID-19, Computers, Humans, Pandemics, Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction, SARS-CoV-2, Sensitivity and Specificity, R-script, algorithm, RT-PCR, biomedical validation, delta checks, quality-monitoring
Pubmed
Open Access
Yes
Create date
12/10/2021 15:23
Last modification date
21/07/2023 7:00
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