Differential diagnoses of COVID-19 pneumonia: the current challenge for the radiologist—a pictorial essay

Insights into Imaging

Pasquale Paolantonio¹  Pierfrancesco Podda¹  Elena Santini¹  Andrea Laghi²  Alessia Guarnera² 

[1] Department of Radiology, San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital, Via Dell’Amba Aradam 9, 00184, Rome, Italy;Department of Surgical and Medical Sciences and Translational Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome – Sant’Andrea University Hospital, Via di Grottarossa, 1035-1039, 00189, Rome, Italy;

关键词: COVID-19;    Coronavirus;    Pneumonia;    Differential diagnosis;    Computed tomography;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13244-021-00967-x

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCOVID-19 pneumonia represents the most severe pandemic of the twenty-first century and has crucial clinical, social and economical implications. The scientific community has focused attention and resources on clinical and radiological features of COVID-19 pneumonia. Few papers analysing the vast spectrum of differential diagnoses have been published.Main bodyComplexity of differential diagnosis lays in the evidence of similar radiological findings as ground-glass opacities, crazy paving pattern and consolidations in COVID-19 pneumonia and a multitude of other lung diseases. Differential diagnosis is and will be extremely important during and after the pandemic peak, when there are fewer COVID-19 pneumonia cases. The aim of our pictorial essay is to schematically present COVID-19 pneumonia most frequent differential diagnoses to help the radiologist face the current COVID-19 pneumonia challenge.ConclusionsClinical data, laboratory tests and imaging are pillars of a trident, which allows to reach a correct diagnosis in order to grant an excellent allocation of human and economical resources. The radiologist has a pivotal role in the early diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia because he may raise suspicion of the pathology and help to avoid COVID-19 virus spread.

【 授权许可】

CC BY