ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has attracted worldwide attention ever since the first case was identified in Wuhan (China) in December 2019 and was classified, at a later time, as a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020 and as a pandemic in March 2020. The interstitial pneumonia caused by COVID-19 often requires mechanical ventilation, which can lead to pulmonary barotrauma. We assessed the relationship between pneumonia severity and the development of barotrauma in COVID-19-positive patients mechanically ventilated in an intensive care unit; we therefore analyzed the prevalence of iatrogenic barotrauma and its trends over time during the pandemic in COVID-19-positive patients undergoing mechanical ventilation compared to COVID-19-negative patients, making a distinction between different types of ventilation (invasive mechanical ventilation vs. noninvasive mechanical ventilation). We compared CT findings of pneumomediastinum and pneumothorax in 104 COVID-19-positive patients hospitalized in an intensive care unit and 101 COVID-19-negative patients undergoing mechanical ventilation in the period between October 2020 and December 2021. The severity of pneumonia was not directly correlated with the development of barotrauma. Furthermore, a higher prevalence of complications due to barotrauma was observed in the group of mechanically ventilated COVID-19-postive patients vs. COVID-19-negative patients. A higher rate of barotrauma was observed in subgroups of COVID-19-positive patients undergoing mechanical ventilation compared to those treated with invasive mechanical ventilation. The prevalence of barotrauma in COVID 19-positive patients showed a decreasing trend over the period under review. CT remains an essential tool in the early detection, diagnosis, and monitoring of the clinical course of SARS-CoV2 pneumonia; in evaluating the disease severity; and in the assessment of iatrogenic complications such as barotrauma pathology.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Recent studies of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) demonstrated that obesity is significantly associated with increased disease severity, clinical outcome, and mortality. The association between hepatic steatosis, which frequently accompanies obesity, and the pneumonia severity score (PSS) evaluated on computed tomography (CT), and the prevalence of steatosis in patients with COVID-19 remains to be elucidated. AIM: To assess the frequency of hepatic steatosis in the chest CT of COVID-19 patients and its association with the PSS. METHODS: The chest CT images of 485 patients who were admitted to the emergency department with suspected COVID-19 were retrospectively evaluated. The patients were divided into two groups as COVID-19-positive [CT- and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)-positive] and controls (CT- and RT-PCR-negative). The CT images of both groups were evaluated for PSS as the ratio of the volume of involved lung parenchyma to the total lung volume. Hepatic steatosis was defined as a liver attenuation value of ≤ 40 Hounsfield units (HU). RESULTS: Of the 485 patients, 56.5% (n = 274) were defined as the COVID-19-positive group and 43.5% (n = 211) as the control group. The average age of the COVID-19-positive group was significantly higher than that of the control group (50.9 ± 10.9 years vs 40.4 ± 12.3 years, P < 0.001). The frequency of hepatic steatosis in the positive group was significantly higher compared with the control group (40.9% vs 19.4%, P < 0.001). The average hepatic attenuation values were significantly lower in the positive group compared with the control group (45.7 ± 11.4 HU vs 53.9 ± 15.9 HU, P < 0.001). Logistic regression analysis showed that after adjusting for age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, overweight, and obesity there was almost a 2.2 times greater odds of hepatic steatosis in the COVID-19-positive group than in the controls (odds ratio 2.187; 95% confidence interval: 1.336-3.580, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The prevalence of hepatic steatosis was significantly higher in COVID-19 patients compared with controls after adjustment for age and comorbidities. This finding can be easily assessed on chest CT images.