Objective: To determine a cut-off value of Chest CT severity score (CT-SS) in order to discriminate between the clinical types of COVID-19 pneumonia.
Background and Objectives: Radiology emerged as one of the frontline clinical services in the COVID-19 pandemic. This audit study aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the radiological services in a tertiary care hospital in terms of workload and case mix. Methods: We compared the overall workload of the radiology department between March 2019 to December 2020, emphasizing the number of CTs and Chest radiographs performed during the pandemic. The first period starting when the first confirmed case presented to our hospital and the second control period in the same months in 2019. The imaging parameters included the total number of CTs, MRIs, Ultrasounds, Radiographs, CTs from the emergency room (ER), OPD, IPD, CT chest performed for COVID-19 and other emergency indications. All parameters were calculated by taking average each month in both study periods. Results: An overall decrease was observed in the number of all primary imaging modalities during the pandemic, with ultrasound showing a maximum reduction in numbers (36.5%) followed by radiographs (29.6%) and MRIs (13.8%) compared to 2019. However, total CTs showed a minimal decrease of 1.6% with a significant leap in HRCTs performed reaching up to 80.5%. Conclusion: COVID-19 and resultant movement restrictions, although they did lead to a reduction in overall radiology work volume, were compensated by an increase in the number of studies performed through emergency and for management of COVID-19 infection. Abbreviations:COVID-19= Coronavirus disease 2019, CT = Computed Tomography, HRCT = High resolution CT, MRI = Magnetic Resonance Imaging, USG = Ultrasound, CXR = Chest Radiograph, RIS = Radiology Information system, ER = Emergency Department, IPD = In patient Department, OPD = Outpatient Department. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.6.5272 How to cite this:Masood L, Gul S, Bano S, Saeed R. Impact of COVID pandemic upon radiological services in a tertiary care hospital - A clinical audit. Pak J Med Sci. 2022;38(6):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.38.6.5272 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) was pneumonia initially reported as epidemic in Wuhan, China due to novel Corona virus outbreak in late 2019. It has now assumed the status of pandemic with global infection spread. This infection has diversified clinical 1 -3 presentations ranging from milder symptoms like flu to severe symptoms as seen with severe respiratory distress syndromes (SARS) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS) having mortality rates of 10% and 37% respectively. Considering high contiguity of virus, 1,4,5 early differentiation between infected and noninfected patients is of extreme importance to prevent transmission of infection to non-infected population and health care providers. 6 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay is the standard reference diagnostic modality for detection of infection
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.