Abstract
Purpose: To assess the presence and pattern of incidental interstitial lung alterations suspicious of COVID-19 on fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) ([18F]FDG PET/CT) in asymptomatic oncological patients during the period of active COVID-19 in a country with high prevalence of the virus. Methods: This is a multi-center retrospective observational study involving 59 Italian centers. We retrospectively reviewed the prevalence of interstitial pneumonia detected during the COVID period (between March 16 and 27, 2020) and compared to a pre-COVID period (January–February 2020) and a control time (in 2019). The diagnosis of interstitial pneumonia was done considering lung alterations of CT of PET. Results: Overall, [18F]FDG PET/CT was performed on 4008 patients in the COVID period, 19,267 in the pre-COVID period, and 5513 in the control period. The rate of interstitial pneumonia suspicious for COVID-19 was significantly higher during the COVID period (7.1%) compared with that found in the pre-COVID (5.35%) and control periods (5.15%) (p < 0.001). Instead, no significant difference among pre-COVID and control periods was present. The prevalence of interstitial pneumonia detected at PET/CT was directly associated with geographic virus diffusion, with the higher rate in Northern Italy. Among 284 interstitial pneumonia detected during COVID period, 169 (59%) were FDG-avid (average SUVmax of 4.1). Conclusions: A significant increase of interstitial pneumonia incidentally detected with [18F]FDG PET/CT has been demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. A majority of interstitial pneumonia were FDG-avid. Our results underlined the importance of paying attention to incidental CT findings of pneumonia detected at PET/CT, and these reports might help to recognize early COVID-19 cases guiding the subsequent management.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 2871-2882 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- 18F-FDG PET/CT
- Asymptomatic
- COVID-19
- Incidental findings
- Interstitial pneumonia
- SARS-CoV-2
- fluorodeoxyglucose f 18
- clinical trial
- diagnostic imaging
- human
- interstitial lung disease
- Italy
- multicenter study
- pandemic
- positron emission tomography-computed tomography
- prevalence
- retrospective study
- Fluorodeoxyglucose F18
- Humans
- Lung Diseases, Interstitial
- Pandemics
- Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography
- Prevalence
- Retrospective Studies