Abstract

Nasopharyngeal swabs (NS) have been routinely used during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, little is known about how well Salivary swab(SS) works in identifying other common respiratory infections. The present retrospective study was planned to check the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) of Nasopharyngeal (NS) and Salivary swab (SS). Material and methods -126 subjects were selected, whose NS and SS were used to diagnose respiratory tract infection by RT-PCR. Adults over the age of 18 who had been admitted with respiratory signs and symptoms had nasopharyngeal and SS procedures. The nasopharyngeal swab results were used as the standard for calculating the SS's sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV).Data was collected from the medical record of regional hospital of Shahjahanpur U. P. Results: A total of 126 patients (55 females) underwent NS and SS. 51.7% of the SS was sensitive overall. The sensitivity for different respiratory viruses ranged from 0% to 81.4%, whereas the specificity ranged from 88.8% to 100%. The negative predictive value was between 71.6% and 98.8%, whereas the positive predictive value ranged from 80.3% to 100%. Conclusions: SS has a somewhat low sensitivity in detecting common respiratory viruses in individuals with respiratory tract infections (LRTI). New techniques for superior saliva collection are needed in order to test on a wider research population

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