AUTHOR=Devkota Shritik , Garg Mandeep , Debi Uma , Dhooria Sahajal , Dua Ashish , Prabhakar Nidhi , Soni Saumya , Maralakunte Muniraju , Gulati Ajay , Singh Tarvinder , Sandhu Manavjit Singh 

TITLE=Evaluating Lung Changes in Long COVID: Ultra-Low‐Dose vs. Standard‐Dose CT Chest

JOURNAL=British Journal of Biomedical Science

VOLUME=Volume 81 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/journals/british-journal-of-biomedical-science/articles/10.3389/bjbs.2024.13385

DOI=10.3389/bjbs.2024.13385

ISSN=2474-0896

ABSTRACT=Frequent chest CTs within a short period during follow-up of Long COVID post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) patients may increase the risk of radiation-related health effects in the exposed individuals. We aimed to assess the image quality and diagnostic accuracy of ultralow-dose CT (ULDCT) chest compared to standard-dose CT (SDCT) in detecting lung abnormalities associated with Long COVIDPASC. exhibited a significantly higher sensitivity (88% vs 60.3%, p<0.0001) and diagnostic accuracy (97.7% vs 84.9%,p<0.0001) compared to obese subjects. ULDCT showed very strong correlation with SDCT in terms of CT severity score (r=0.996, p<0.0001). The mean effective radiation dose with ULDCT was 0.25 ± 0.02 mSv with net radiation dose reduction of 94.8±1.7% (p<0.0001) when compared to SDCT (5.5±1.96 mSv).ULDCT scans achieved comparable diagnostic accuracy to SDCT for detecting Long COVID PASC lung abnormalities in non-obese patients, while significantly reducing radiation exposure.