ROLE OF COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY SCAN IN EVALUATION OF NEUROLOGICAL MANIFESTATIONS IN COVID 19 POSITIVE PATIENTS AND ITS CORRELATION WITH D-DIMER VALUE AND GCS: A RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY IN A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL IN CENTRAL INDIA

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the incidence and spectrum of neuroimaging ndings and their prognostic role in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Government Medical College Nagpur along with their correlation with D-Dimer Values and GCS . Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study of 774 COVID-19 conrmed patients admitted to Government Medical College st st Nagpur between 1 April 2020 and 31 October 2020. Clinical data were extracted from electronic medical records, and particularly data of all neurological symptoms were extracted from the imaging reports. Four neuro-radiologists evaluated all neuroimaging studies for acute neuroimaging ndings related to COVID-19. Plasma D-dimer levels were measured using a particle-enhanced, immunoturbidimetric assay on admission in the 116 patients who came for evaluation of neurological symptoms. Moreover ,the patients were classied into different groups as mild, moderate and severe based on their GCS scores and was assessed with respect to their neuro-imaging ndings. Results: 15 % of the admitted patients suffered from neurological symptoms. Acute stroke was the most common nding in the patients with positive neuroimaging ndings resulting in 34.4% of the patients with positive neuroimaging ndings. Other ndings were subacute infarcts (13.8%), Chronic lacunar infarcts (20.6%) , Intraparenchymal hemorrhage in 10.4 %, hypertensive encephalopathy in 7 % and subarachanoid hemorrhage in 3.4 %. Plasma median D-dimer levels were signicantly (P฀ =฀ 0.000) higher in Acute stroke patients as compared to COVID 19 positive patients who had negative CT scan imaging features(0.88; interquartile range [IQR], 0.28–2.11 mg/L and 0.31; IQR, 0.17–0.74 mg/L). Patients who have positive neuroimaging ndings presented with a lower GCS whereas patients who had negative neuroimaging ndings presented with a higher GCS. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates acute stroke is the most common neuroloimaging nding in hospitalized COVID 19 Patients. Moreover D-Dimer values are highly predictive of acute ischemic stroke. Patients with positive neuro-imaging ndings have poor GCS scores.