Repeat chest CT scans in moderate-to-severe patients’ management during the Covid-19 pandemic: Observations from a single centre in Wuhan, China

Abstract

Objective To observe the rates of repeated computed tomographic scans (CTs) in a cohort of patients with coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) and to assess the validity of repeat CTs. Methods Each CT was recorded, and the validity of the repeated CTs was assessed. Results The 394 patients underwent a total of 1493 CTs. Of the 394 patients, 260 received at least one non-value-added CT. Both the total number of CTs (median, 4; interquartile range (IQR), 3–5) and non-value-added CTs (median, 1; IQR, 0–1) per patient were strongly related to the disease duration (R2 = 0.566 for total CTs, R2 = 0.432 for non-value-added CTs, p < 0.001). The proportion of non-value-added CTs was potentially higher after 3 weeks from symptom onset (>35%). Conclusions There was a high rate of repeat CTs for the COVID-19 patients, and the proportion of non-value-added CTs increased with disease duration. Follow-up CT should be avoided without clinical decline. Advances in Knowledge. As COVID-19 is impacting healthcare systems across the globe, we believe in our findings that serial chest CT imaging has limited clinical utility in basically stable COVID-19 patients, will help relieve some of this burden.