An international group of doctors led by Anna Rita Larici from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart published a consensus on tomography studies in patients after COVID-19 in the journal Radiology. Doctors recommend performing control tomography of the chest organs only in those patients whose respiratory problems, which have lasted for more than two months, do not go away or worsen, although more than three months have passed since the infection. This way, it is possible to avoid excessive radiation exposure of patients.
On average, half of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have changes on their chest tomography. In most cases, they resolve spontaneously, so doctors urge to avoid unnecessary diagnostic procedures. In addition, in the consensus, doctors also advise using the correct terminology and not calling post-COVID residual lung changes interstitial lung disease, as this leads to multiple redundant tomographic studies.
