Abstract
Purpose: This study disseminates the diagnosis of COVID-19 emphasizing the importance of imaging tests in medical interpretation and identification of its complications, besides demonstrating the contribution to patient care. Methodology: The study was conducted based on a literature review, in addition to the acquired results of imaging tests from clinical patients at a Public Hospital of the State of Sergipe, Brazil, to point the scoring system in thorax radiography and compare to computed tomography (CT). Results: The imaging tests are not indicated for patients with mild symptoms and suspected COVID-19 infection, except for risk of disease progression, being indicated in the complementary diagnosis of COVID-19 positive patients. Studies show that thorax radiography is more used because it has low cost and easy access. However, its use has limitations due to the low sharpness of the images and impossibility of visualization of some lesions. Computed tomography, on the other hand, can be used as a pulmonary monitoring and evolution test in patients with COVID-19 worsening and/or persistent homeostatic changes. Nevertheless, this test is not indicated for acute cases without aggravating symptoms. Conclusion: The high degree of dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 and the collapse of health systems demonstrated the importance of the science in health. In addition, the importance of laboratory tests in the diagnosis of virus infection and imaging tests in the early diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia has been shown as efficient complementarity in the evolution and clinical interpretation of patients, highlighting the importance of radiography and CT exams.
Highlights
The disease provoked by the new coronavirus (COVID-19) is currently a public health emergency of global importance, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a single-stranded enveloped RNA virus belonging to the Coronaviridae family (Casanova et al, 2020; Huang et al, 2020a; Wu et al, 2020)
The authors Prado and Barjud (2020) point out a structure for the use of imaging tests, with the use of these tests not being indicated in patients with suspected COVID-19 with mild symptoms, except cases at risk of disease progression
The cases indicated for the use of the image diagnostic as a complementary exam in the diagnosis are of patients positive for COVID-19 and with the decline of the respiratory state; patients with negative tests for COVID-19, but with indicative symptoms; patients with suspected COVID-19 with moderate to severe clinical characteristics and with a high probability of progression of the pathology (Rubin et al, 2017)
Summary
The disease provoked by the new coronavirus (COVID-19) is currently a public health emergency of global importance, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a single-stranded enveloped RNA virus belonging to the Coronaviridae family (Casanova et al, 2020; Huang et al, 2020a; Wu et al, 2020). Two countries of that continent occupy the world ranking of confirmed cases of the disease, with the first place occupied by the United States (32,257,416), followed India (21,892,676) and Brazil (15,003,563) (WHO, 2020). This increase has exceeded the capacity of health systems, overcrowding units, and leading to the collapse of the health system in many countries (Peck, 2020). This result was a consequence of the deficit of prevention methods, business and educational institutions re-opening, shifting from outdoors to indoors gathering, misinformation campaigns, among other factors which contributed to the increase in number of infected individuals in these regions
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