Role of Imaging in the Management of Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Lung Involvement Admitted to the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review

Abstract

During the waves of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, emergency departments were overflowing with patients suffering with suspected medical or surgical issues. In these settings, healthcare staff should be able to deal with different medical and surgical scenarios while protecting themselves against the risk of contamination. Various strategies were used to overcome the most critical issues and guarantee quick and efficient diagnostic and therapeutic charts. The use of saliva and nasopharyngeal swab Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAAT) in the diagnosis of COVID-19 was one of the most adopted worldwide. However, NAAT results were slow to report and could sometimes create significant delays in patient management, especially during pandemic peaks. On these bases, radiology has played and continues to play an essential role in detecting COVID-19 patients and solving differential diagnosis between different medical conditions. This systematic review aims to summarize the role of radiology in the management of COVID-19 patients admitted to emergency departments by using chest X-rays (CXR), computed tomography (CT), lung ultrasounds (LUS), and artificial intelligence (AI).

A Novel COVID-19 Diagnosis Approach Utilizing a Comprehensive Set of Diagnostic Information (CSDI)

“…COVID-19 has become increasingly pronounced, given that infected individuals may go unnoticed and fail to receive timely and appropriate treatment [6]. The infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) leads to a wide range of clinical manifestations, from completely asymptomatic to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, which complicates the diagnostic process [7,8]. The main barriers to containing the current COVID-19 outbreak are early detection and diagnosis.…”

“…With increasing demand toward providing accurate tests, the dependency on CT images or RT-PCR tests as accurate tools for the detecting of COVID-19 patients is decreased dramatically. To this end, fast and accurate detection of The infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) leads to a wide range of clinical manifestations, from completely asymptomatic to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, which complicates the diagnostic process [7,8]. The main barriers to containing the current COVID-19 outbreak are early detection and diagnosis.…”