Abstract
With nearly 3,800,000 cases and 270,000 deaths reported worldwide, COVID-19 is a global pandemic unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes (1). As early as 1995, the WHO was warning of a global infectious disease crisis, citing 30 new infectious diseases emerging in the past 20 years, loss of antibiotic effectiveness, low rates of immunization, poverty, and inadequate investment in public health contributing to the more than 17 million people dying each year from infectious diseases, principally in Low and Middle Income countries (LMIC) (2). Unlike previous infectious diseases, at the time of this writing over 63% of the total reported cases of COVID-19 are in 6 High Income Countries (HIC): USA, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the UK. Information concerning the imaging findings in COVID-19 has been rapidly disseminated from the centers first affected by the pandemic. This article attempts to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the imaging findings in COVID-19, focusing on pulmonary findings, and offer recommendation for the use of imaging for diagnosis and surveillance of COVID-19, particularly in LMIC.
Highlights
Regardless of modality, imaging is not able to distinguish COVID from other viral pneumonias
This article attempts to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the imaging findings in COVID-19, focusing on pulmonary findings, and offer recommendation for the use of imaging for diagnosis and surveillance of COVID-19, in Low and Middle Income countries (LMIC)
For readers unfamiliar with the current terminology for chest radiography, chest CT, and pulmonary ultrasound in COVID, modality-specific terminology is listed in Addendum 1
Summary
The greatest limitations in writing this article are the novel nature of this virus, the rapid evolution of the pandemic, and the absence of empirical data comparing the effect of different imaging modalities on patient outcome. Data only gradually became public, rates of illness and death are higher in communities of color than in the white population of the United States [37], highlighting that local economic and medical conditions constrain efforts to prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID by social distancing and self-quarantine. In this dystopic, pandemic-enveloped world, segmenting global radiology and constrained resources by country may be arcane. Perhaps the focus should be low-income areas (LIA) regardless of the country in which they exist?
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