diagnostic value of clinical symptoms of covid-19 in the early diagnosis of the disease

Background: early diagnosis of covid-19 can have an important role in the decrease of mortality of patients. symptoms such as fever and cough are the first diagnostic information. due to the importance of early diagnosis of covid-19, the current study aimed to assess the diagnostic value of different symptoms in detecting covid-19 cases. materials and methods: in the current cross-sectional study, 392 covid-19 patients were confirmed based on rt-pcr (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) using nose and throat swab specimens and or chest ct scan compatible with covid-19 infection. the diagnostic value of symptoms in detecting covid-19 was measured using the sensitivity, specificity, false alarm rate, likelihood ratio, and area under the receiver operating characteristics (roc) curve (auc). results: the highest sensitivity and lowest false negative in the detection of covid-19 cases were seen in dyspnea and cough with a sensitivity of 0.59 (95%ci: 0.51-0.66) and 0.57 (95%ci: 0.49-0.65) respectively. in terms of specificity, the loss of consciousness with specificity 0.95 (95%ci: 0.92-0.98) had the best performance so this symptom had the lowest false positive in the detection of covid-19 cases. the most positive likelihood ratio (lr+) was seen in cough (lr+:1.41) and fever (lr+:1.21), respectively. the most positive predictive value (ppv) was seen in cough (ppv: 0.49 (95%ci: 0.41- 0.56)), and fever (ppv: 0.45(95%ci: 0.37-0.53)) respectively. conclusion: early symptoms among patients tested for sars-cov-2 identified those general non-respiratory symptoms were strongly associated with test positivity.