Radiologic evaluation of discharge quality in patients with COVID-19 [post]

Jingwen Li, Xi Long, Fang Fang, Xuefei Lv, Dandan Zhang, Yu Sun, Na Li, Qing Zhang, Xi Fang, Shaoping Hu, Zhicheng Lin, Nian Xiong
2020 unpublished
Background Worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has made hundreds of thousands people sick and fortunately many of them have been treated and discharged. However, it remains unclear how well the discharged patients were recovering. Chest CT scan, with demonstrated high sensitivity to COVID-19, was used here to examine clinical manifestations in patients at discharge.Methods This study registered retrospectively single-center case series of 180 discharged patients,
more » ... l confirmed with COVID-19 at Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, China. Epidemiological, demographic, clinical, laboratory and treatment data were collected. CT imaging features of absorption vs progressive stage were compared and analyzed.Results Five pulmonary lobes were affected in 54 (30%) of the 180 patients at the absorption stage, comparing to 66% of them at the progressive stage (P=1.45×10-11). Forty five (25%) patients had pleural effusion on admission and 13 of them still carried hydrothorax when discharged as per standard discharge criteria(P=4.48×10-6). Besides, compared with those at progressive stage, 97 (54%) discharged patients had interlobular thickening (P=6.95×10-3) and 43% of them still presented adjacent pleura thickening (P=5.58×10-5). The median total CT score of discharged patients at absorption stage was lower than progressive stage (3 vs 12.5 ). The median total CT score recovery rate was 67% (range, 0-100%) and 139 (77%) patients showed less than 90% improvement at discharge.Conclusions A majority (77%) of the discharged patients had not recovered completely. The current discharge criteria may need to include 90% or higher CT score-based recovery rate.Authors Jingwen Li, Xi Long, Fang Fang, and Xuefei Lv contributed equally to this work.Authors Zhicheng Lin and Nian Xiong are joint last coauthors.
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-33158/v1 fatcat:phrskv3zjjh4zk5kwcsdgdhccy