Dear CT Insider,
The initial fear of COVID-19 patients felt by some clinical staff has been entirely understandable, given the very different challenges posed by the disease. But the good news is that this fear now appears to have been replaced by a reassuring calmness, say two chest radiologists who have just reported their experiences of CT scans performed on COVID-19 patients.
The researchers say the low prevalence of chest CT findings in their population was intriguing. Also, segmental pulmonary vessel enlargement was a unique finding in their COVID-19 pneumonia patients, and they are convinced this finding is peculiar to COVID-19 pneumonia and has diagnostic value.
In a second story posted today, we bring you news from Moscow, where 48 outpatient CT facilities performed over 170,000 chest CT scans from 13 April to 20 June, and more than 82,000 cases of COVID-19 pneumonia were detected.
There's much talk in Europe right now about the strong likelihood of a second wave of COVID-19, but Singapore is already experiencing it. For instance, CT downtime per case has fallen from about five hours to 1.5 hours, illustrating the pressure on CT services. Radiologist Dr. Lionel Cheng has shared his thoughts on the topic.
Away from the pandemic, I recommend you read our case study report about image-guided interventions at the Marie Lannelongue hospital in Paris. Interestingly, staff are performing a conebeam CT scan at the end of some procedures to provide a 3D dataset that doctors can use to check technical success.
Typical workup for trauma patients comprises a physical exam, x-ray of the chest and pelvis, ultrasound, and region-specific CT, but this protocol can be time-consuming and prone to misdiagnosis. Australian researchers are convinced that whole-body CT can also have a useful role to play in these cases.
Another recent report from Australia focuses on a free online diagnostic training tool that is showing promise as a way of improving the capacity to detect early-stage COVID-19 on chest CT.
This newsletter highlights only a few of the many articles posted recently in the CT Community. For the full list, check out the lineup below.
