The Lancet
Hope, Michael D.; Raptis, Constantine A.; Shah, Amar; Hammer, Mark M.; Henry, Travis S.
Introduction
Radiologists have watched the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic unfold, wondering if and how imaging could be useful for diagnosis. Perhaps imaging could aid in screening or accelerate the speed of diagnosis, especially with shortages of RT-PCR.
Some radiology literature suggests a pivotal role for CT. Ai and colleagues report on 1014 patients who received both RT-PCR and CT in Wuhan, China, during their epidemic. They found that 97% of cases with RT-PCR-confirmed diagnoses had CT findings of pneumonia, and conclude, “CT imaging has high sensitivity for diagnosis of COVID-19”. Other investigators are less optimistic. Inui and colleagues reviewed CT scans of 112 cases of RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Less than two-thirds (61%) of cases had lung opacities on CT; 20% of symptomatic patients had negative CTs.
Keywords
Clinical aspects, diagnosis, treatment