Chest CT in COVID-19 patients: Structured vs conventional reporting

•Chest CT in COVID-19 is a crucial element for patient management.•Radiology reports should convey CT data clearly and comprehensively.•Conventional reports show heterogeneous quality.•Structured reports meet the preferences of referring physicians. To assess clinician satisfaction with structured (SR) and conventional (CR) radiological reports for chest CT exams in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, objectively comparing both reporting strategies. We retrospectively included 68 CTs (61 patients) with COVID-19. CRs were collected from the digital database while corresponding SRs were written by an expert radiologist, including a sign checklist, severity score index and final impressions. New CRs were prepared for a random subset (n = 10) of cases, to allow comparisons in reporting time and word count. CRs were analyzed to record severity score and final impressions inclusion. A random subset of 40 paired CRs and SRs was evaluated by two clinicians to assess, using a Likert scale, readability, comprehensiveness, comprehensibility, conciseness, clinical impact, and overall quality. Overall, 19/68 (28 %) and 9/68 (13 %) of CRs included final impressions and severity score, respectively. SR writing required significantly (p < 0.001) less time (mean = 308 s; SD ± 60 s) compared to CRs (mean = 458 s; SD ± 72 s). On the other hand, word count was not significantly different (p = 0.059, median = 100 and 106, range = 106–139 and 88–131 for SRs and CRs, respectively). Both clinicians expressed significantly (all p < 0.01) higher scores for SRs compared to CRs in all categories. Our study supports the use of chest CT SRs in COVID-19 patients to improve referring physician satisfaction, optimizing reporting time and provide a greater amount and quality of information within the report.