अमूर्त

Atypical Radiological Presentations Of Covid-19

Harveen Kaur*, Balbir Malhotra, Dilbag Singh, Amritpal Kaur, Jasvir Kaur

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) is an infectious disease caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2). It has virtually affected every territory of the world except few isolated South Pacific island states and Antarctica. Though RT-PCR testing for the diagnosis of SARS-Cov-2 is the gold standard but in many settings chest imaging has been considered as a part of diagnostic work-up of patients with suspected or probable COVID-19, patients where RT-PCR is either not available or results are delayed or are virtually negative in patients of strongly suspected COVID-19. Chest imaging has also been considered to complement clinical evaluation in the management of patients or to judge the severity of disease.1 CT Chest is also more sensitive than RT PCR which takes significantly larger tissue. The sensitivity of CT Chest is 97 % versus RT-PCR (60 %).2 Moreover, especially in the early phases of the COVID-19 infection or in the presence of disease with a low viral load, the RT-PCR test may be negative, but CT may reveal significant findings.