Mustafa HM, Abdulateef DS, Rahman HS. Misdiagnosis of COVID-19 infection before molecular confirmation in Sulaimaniyah City, Iraq.
Eur J Med Res 2022;
27:84. [PMID:
35659786 PMCID:
PMC9164388 DOI:
10.1186/s40001-022-00704-0]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2021] [Accepted: 05/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
During the last 2 years, in the Kurdistan Region, Northern Iraq, there were thousands of COVID-19 cases that have not been reported officially, but diagnosed and confirmed by private laboratories and private hospitals, or clinicians based on typical clinical signs, as well as few people using home self-test after appearing of some flu-like clinical symptoms. Thus, this study aims to assess the misdiagnosis and mismanagement of cases before COVID-19 confirmation.
Methods
This study enrolled 100 consecutive patients who visited an outpatient clinic of Shar Hospital that had symptoms highly suspicious of COVID-19 infection while misdiagnosed previously to have other types of disease. Detailed questionnaires were filled for all studied patients, including age, gender, main presenting symptoms, and duration of these symptoms with the following questions: who made the false diagnosis, depending on which diagnostic test the false diagnosis was made, which medication was used for the false diagnosis, who prescribed those medications, and how long those medications were used. They were investigated by RT-PCR on their nasopharyngeal swab for confirmation.
Results
Most of the false diagnoses were typhoid (63%), influenza (14%), pneumonia (9%), gastroenteritis (5%), common cold (4%), brucellosis (4%), and meningitis (1%). Regarding the false diagnosis of cases, 92% were made by non-physician healthcare workers, and only 8% were made by physicians. All false diagnoses with typhoid, gastroenteritis, and common cold were made by non-physician healthcare workers, together with about half of the diagnosis of pneumonia and brucellosis, with statistically significant results (P < 0.001).
Conclusions
We realized that some patients had been misdiagnosed before the COVID-19 infection confirmation. Their health conditions improved drastically after correct diagnosis and treatment, and this research is considered the first research to be conducted in Iraq in this regard.
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