Dynamic changes of Chest CT follow-up in Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pneumonia: relationship to clinical typing

Nian Liu,Jie Wu,Xiaohua Huang,Wenying Lu,Qiang Li,Guanghong He,Tao Cheng,Jianxin Chen,Min Ma,Xiongxiong Yang

doi:10.1186/s12880-020-00491-2

Abstract

BackgroundTo investigate the CT changes of different clinical types of COVID-19 pneumonia.MethodsThis retrospective study included 50 patients with COVID-19 from 16 January 2020 to 25 February 2020. We analyzed the clinical characteristics, CT characteristics and the pneumonia involvement of the patients between the moderate group and the severe and critical group, and the dynamic changes of severity with the CT follow-up time.ResultsThere were differences in the CT severity score of the right lung in the initial CT, and total CT severity score in the initial and follow-up CT between the moderate group and the severe and critical group (all p < 0.05). There was a quadratic relationship between total CT severity score and CT follow-up time in the severe and critical group (r2 = 0.137, p = 0.008), the total CT severity score peaked at the second follow-up CT. There was no correlation between total CT severity score and CT follow-up time in the moderate group (p > 0.05). There were no differences in the occurrence rate of CT characteristics in the initial CT between the two groups (all p > 0.05). There were differences in the occurrence rate of ground-glass opacity and crazy-paving pattern in the second follow-up CT, and pleural thickening or adhesion in the third follow-up CT between the two groups (all p < 0.05).ConclusionsThe CT changes of COVID-19 pneumonia with different severity were different, and the extent of pneumonia involvement by CT can help to assess the severity of COVID-19 pneumonia rather than the initial CT characteristics.

Highlights

To investigate the CT changes of different clinical types of COVID-19 pneumonia
Chest CT may be helpful for early diagnosis, especially when a person is suspected with COVID-19, but reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) screening is negative [9,10,11,12]
There were no differences in the occurrence rate of CT characteristics in the initial CT between the two groups, which indicates that the initial CT characteristics had no certain specificity and regularity in distinguishing the severity of COVID-19 pneumonia

Summary

Introduction

To investigate the CT changes of different clinical types of COVID-19 pneumonia. Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China in December 2019, with the increase in the number of global cases, COVID-19 has posed major threats to the public health [1, 2]. Chest CT follow-up is of great value in the evaluation of the condition assessment and therapeutic effect of COVID-19 pneumonia [17,18,19]. It is not clear whether there are differences in chest CT findings of COVID-19 pneumonia with different severity. CT imaging is helpful to judge the evolution and prognosis of COVID-19 pneumonia, but whether COVID-19 with different severity has characteristic CT findings is still unclear. It is still a question worth discussing whether CT imaging can help to evaluate the clinical type of COVID-19

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion