2023 ARRS ANNUAL MEETING - ABSTRACTS

RETURN TO ABSTRACT LISTING


E2472. Pictorial Review of Chronic Imaging Findings After COVID-19
Authors
  1. Pooyan Khalighinejad; UT Southwestern Medical Center
  2. Rodrigo Caruso Chate; Universidade de São Paulo Hospital das Clínicas
  3. Arzu Canan; UT Southwestern Medical Center
  4. Kiran Batra; UT Southwestern Medical Center
  5. Asha Kandathil; UT Southwestern Medical Center
  6. Fernando Kay; UT Southwestern Medical Center
Background
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has led to more than 5.2 million hospitalizations and 1 million deaths in the United States. In the acute phase, most common imaging findings in the lungs of symptomatic patients are ground glass opacities, irregular lesions, and bronchovascular bundle thickening, which are reported in approximately 70%, 54%, and 40% of hospitalized patients, respectively. However, with the acute phase of the pandemic subsiding, chronic complications have become more frequent. In a recent study that evaluated patients withCOVID-19 4 months after hospitalization, 51% reported symptoms that did not exist before the disease. Some studies have shown pulmonary radiological abnormalities in as much as half of the patients six months after the symptom onset. In a cohort with only 10% of patients who had severe pneumonia during the acute phase, pulmonary radiological abnormalities were detected in about 71% of the cases at the 3-month follow-up imaging examination. Moreover, many studies have reported pulmonary fibrosis lasting up to six months in COVID-19 survivors after discharging from the hospital. Since abnormal pulmonary imaging findings have been reported months after exposure to COVID-19 irrespective of symptoms at the time of follow-up imaging, it is imperative that radiologists become familiar with common imaging presentation and clinical correlation in chronic COVID-19 findings.

Educational Goals / Teaching Points
Cases from two institutions (UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, and Clinics Hospital, Sao Paulo, Brazil, will be reviewed for chronic COVID-19 radiologic findings and the correlation of their clinical course.

Key Anatomic/Physiologic Issues and Imaging Findings/Techniques
Chest radiographs and CT will be reviewed. Moreover, examples for the following radiologic findings will be reviewed along with their clinical course including ground-glass and peripheral opacities, reticulations, consolidations, mosaic attenuation, bronchial wall thickening, parenchymal bands, traction bronchiectasis, and honeycombing.

Conclusion
It is imperative for radiologists to identify chronic pulmonary radiologic findings related to COVID-19, which can be found months after the initial exposure with long-term respiratory complications.