A pneumonia of unknown cause that rapidly develops into acute respiratory distress syndrome has been reported since December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China [
1–
5]. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention subsequently confirmed that the cause of this pneumonia was a novel coronavirus identified in lower respiratory tract samples. This novel coronavirus has been designated as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. SARS-CoV-2 is a type of RNA virus that belongs to the family of coronaviruses, which primarily leads to respiratory tract infection. Patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 can have severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and multiple-organ failure develop, which can lead to death. SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted from human to human through respiratory droplets, contact, and even fecal-oral transmission. Nearly 76,392 cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, have been confirmed in China, and according to an announcement made by the Chinese government on February 22, 2020, a total of 2348 patients have died. Although prevention and control measures have been applied to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in China, including isolation of people suspected of having the disease, improvement in diagnostic and treatment procedures is still required. Cases of COVID-19 in China are no longer limited to Wuhan, especially after with a large influx of visitors from Wuhan to other cities during the spring festival period, and the disease has quickly spread across China.
Fever observation departments, which are independent emergency departments dedicated to assessing patients with fever or a history of exposure to COVID-19, have rapidly been established nationwide. The goal of these specialized departments is to undertake the diagnosis and evaluation of patients with suspected COVID-19 and to provide frontline diagnosis and confirmation of the disease.
Discussion
The fever observation department, an independent emergency department dedicated to patients with fever or a history of exposure to COVID-19, is on the front line of confirming and diagnosing COVID-19. Despite the publication of several preliminary studies of COVID-19, descriptions of the imaging features of this disease have been limited. All preliminary analyses involved patients with confirmed cases of COVID-19. In a study of 41 patients, Huang et al. [
2] found that 40 patients (98%) had bilateral involvement. They reported that the typical chest CT findings for patients admitted to the ICU were bilateral, multiple, lobular, and subsegmental areas of consolidation, whereas findings for patients not admitted to the ICU were bilateral GGO and subsegmental areas of consolidation. In a study of 99 patients, Chen et al. [
4] reported that 74 patients (75%) had bilateral pneumonia, with just 25 (25%) having unilateral pneumonia. On the other hand, 14 patients (14%) had multiple areas of mottling and GGO. Lei et al. [
9] reported a patient with multiple peripheral GGO in both lungs. In a study by Chan et al. [
3], six of seven patients had multifocal patchy GGO on CT, especially around the peripheral parts of the lungs. In a study of 51 patients, Song et al. [
10] reported that pure GGO were found in 77% of patients and that they showed predominantly bilateral, posterior, and peripheral distribution. To our knowledge, no comparison study of patients who presented in the fever observation department has been performed to date; such a study would be helpful in determining the differential diagnosis for COVID-19.
In the present study, although GGO, mixed GGO, and consolidation were found both in patients with positive RT-PCR test results and in patients with negative RT-PCR test results, the most commonly observed opacification observed in patients with COVID-19 was GGO (100.0% [11/11]), which appeared predominantly in the peripheral zone and most often involved lung lobes and segments. Patients with COVID-19 had a mean interval of 4.40 ± 2.00 days between the onset of symptoms and the first visit to the fever observation department. This strongly suggests that GGO may be the most common imaging manifestation among patients with COVID-19 who are seen in the fever observation department, especially among patients with a history of exposure to COVID-19, which is helpful in diagnosing and isolating cases while they are in the early stage of disease.
It is worth mentioning that in two of the 11 patients who presented with pure GGO or mixed GGO, the appearance of the GGO was round or oval instead of patchy (
Fig. 4). Physicians and radiologists on the front line should keep in mind the diversity of imaging presentations of COVID-19. An RT-PCR test remains necessary for patients with uncertain imaging findings and is crucial for control of the outbreak, especially during this early period of the outbreak when the history of exposure may be unknown.
Compatible with findings of a previous study by Chan et al. [
3], pleural effusion and lymphadenopathy were not found. Cystic changes and tree-in-bud sign were found in only one of the patients with COVID-19 during their first visit to the hospital, and these findings also were also not found in patients with non–COVID-19 pneumonia, according to previously published studies [
11–
16].
Consistent with findings of previous studies [
2,
4,
5], COVID-19 was more often found in men than in women in our study, having been diagnosed in eight men and three women. A potential explanation for this finding may be protection provided by the X chromosome and sex hormones, which play an important role in innate and adaptive immunity [
4].
Chen et al. [
4] proposed the MuLBSTA score (the multilobular infiltration, hypolymphocytosis, bacterial coinfection, smoking history, hypertension, and age score) as an early warning model for predicting mortality associated with viral pneumonia in patients receiving treatment for COVID-19. The MuLBSTA scoring system includes the following six indexes: multilobular opacification, lymphopenia, bacterial coinfection, smoking history, hypertension, and age. The youngest patient in the present study, a 25-year-old man (
Fig. 3) with a low MuLBSTA score of 5 but with involvement of all five lung lobes, had rapid disease progression and was treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. A possible explanation for this discrepancy may be that the cytokine storm was associated with disease severity [
2] regardless of the clinical background of the patient. Further investigation with use of a bigger sample size is needed to explore the applicability of the MuLBSTA score in predicting the prognosis of COVID-19.
Human coronaviruses are considered important pathogens that cause respiratory infection. Two other coronavirus outbreaks have been reported in the 21st century, including an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus in Guangdong province, China, and an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. These two highly pathogenic viruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, generally caused severe respiratory syndrome in humans. In contrast, the severity of COVID-19 has tended to be less severe, although deaths have been reported [
2–
5]. Although all three of these coronavirus infections have similar common manifestations (i.e., unilateral or bilateral GGO or consolidation) on radiography at presentation, COVID-19 shows more extensive GGO than consolidation, which is consistent with clinical findings [
11–
16].
There is a wide range of CT manifestations of viral pneumonia. Although not all cases of viral pneumonia have typical imaging patterns, most cases have similar manifestations on imaging and are related to the pathogenesis of pulmonary viral infection. For example, pneumonia caused by varicella-zoster virus shows pulmonary nodulation with a surrounding halo or patchy GGO in both lungs [
17]. Moreover, influenza A virus infection presents as multiple areas of consolidation and diffuse GGO, which is similar to the presentation of COVID-19 pneumonia [
18,
19]. This may confound confirmation of a cause, especially against a background of the ongoing spread of COVID-19 and the circulation of other respiratory viruses.
The following limitations of the present study should be mentioned. First, the number of cases is small. This is a case series of patients admitted to a fever observation department; a larger cohort study would be helpful to further explore the details of imaging findings. Statistical tests and p values should be interpreted with caution because of the small sample size. Second, all imaging findings were collected in the fever observation department, where patients were seen during the early stage of the disease. Because our institution undertakes the diagnosis and investigation of suspected cases of COVID-19, once a patient's diagnosis is confirmed, the patient will be referred to the local center for disease control and prevention. Further studies that include follow-up CT examinations are needed to investigate the entire course of the disease. However, the findings of the present study permit early assessment of the imaging characteristics of COVID-19. Third, the infectious cause of non–COVID-19 pneumonia remains unclear because once COVID-19 infection was excluded, patients with negative findings for COVID-19 were rapidly discharged by the fever observation department. Finally, the only additional testing performed for the patients was testing for the influenza A virus (swine-origin influenza A [H1N1] virus, influenza A virus subtype H3N2 virus, and avian influenza A [H7N9] virus) and the influenza B virus.