COVID-19
Statement from the British Society of Thoracic Imaging (BSTI)

6th March 2020

In December 2019 the first case of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in Wuhan City, China. As of March 6th, 2020,22:00 hours, 20,338 UK patients have been tested; 20,175 have been confirmed negative, 163 positive, and there have been two deaths.

Radiology departments should be prepared for an increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 and it is imperative that trusts have standard operating procedures to minimise risks to staff and patients, as outlined by Public Health England (link). Potential templates are also available on our site, but responsibility lies with local policy and implementation.

We understand that in the UK computed tomography (CT) is not felt (at this stage) to have a role in COVID-19 diagnosis. It is, however, quite possible that this position may change and there is a risk that utilisation of CT could be under-estimated.

Currently, a non-enhanced volume CT of the thorax is recommended for those patients attending for CT.

BSTI will also establish a web-link so all hospitals can upload imaging of COVID-19 positive cases. This will be held at UK Cloud, completely anonymized at source with fully encrypted connections. It will be used for upskilling and the provision of training cases.

A BSTI editorial on COVID-19 will be shortly available via the Clinical Radiology Journal (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/clinical-radiology). We also hope to publish potential scenarios for the use of CT.

Useful links:

https://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/AJR.20.22969 https://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(20)30150-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30086-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30134-1/fulltext https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200241 https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200230