Structured thoracic computed tomography report for COVID-19 pandemic

By the end of 2019, a novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2) was identified as the etiologic agent of an outbreak of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, province of Hubei, in China. The virus had a rapid dissemination, with person-to-person transmission and cases soon identified throughout the world. The disease was called COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), with several new outbreaks related to community transmission. It is now classified as pandemic.^–

We have observed an increase in requests of chest computed tomography (CT) since the first records of cases in Brazil; therefore, in a near future, the current installed capacity of the system to analyze and produce the CT reports may be exceeded. It is crucial to highlight that the definite diagnosis of COVID-19 is made by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and a normal (negative) chest CT does not rule out diagnosis. However, currently, the RT-PCR result has taken longer than CT reports to be available, so CT has taken an important role in a comprehensive assessment of patients, for demonstrating high sensitivity (although low specificity), to detect the most frequent pulmonary findings of the disease.