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A “Galactic” Chest X-ray

Clinical manifestations accompanying respiratory failure with insidious and rapidly progressive onset are often non-specific. Symptoms such as a cough, dyspnea, and fever are common to a large number of inflammatory, infectious, or neoplastic diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic it is essential to...

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Autores principales: Carbonelli, Cristiano, de Matthaeis, Angela, Mirijello, Antonio, Di Micco, Concetta, Maiello, Evaristo, De Cosmo, Salvatore, Graziano, Paolo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8158502/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34070198
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11050899
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author Carbonelli, Cristiano
de Matthaeis, Angela
Mirijello, Antonio
Di Micco, Concetta
Maiello, Evaristo
De Cosmo, Salvatore
Graziano, Paolo
author_facet Carbonelli, Cristiano
de Matthaeis, Angela
Mirijello, Antonio
Di Micco, Concetta
Maiello, Evaristo
De Cosmo, Salvatore
Graziano, Paolo
author_sort Carbonelli, Cristiano
collection PubMed
description Clinical manifestations accompanying respiratory failure with insidious and rapidly progressive onset are often non-specific. Symptoms such as a cough, dyspnea, and fever are common to a large number of inflammatory, infectious, or neoplastic diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic it is essential to limit the use of hospital services and inappropriate diagnostic techniques. A particular radiological pattern can orient the clinical and laboratory scenario and guide the diagnostic workup. A 58-year-old woman was admitted to our COVID-19 unit for suspected coronavirus infection. She was complaining of worsening dyspnea, tachycardia, and low grade fever. A chest X-ray showed diffuse, alveolar, and interstitial lung involvement with micronodules tending to coalescence. This radiographic pattern known as “galaxy sign”, consistent with diffuse, coalescing nodular miliary pulmonary involvement, simulating a non-specific alveolar opacification of the lungs is typical of a few pneumological differential diagnoses, represented by sarcoidosis, tuberculosis, pneumoconiosis, and metastatic lesions, and virtually excludes an interstitial viral pneumonitis. The use of endoscopic techniques can, in such cases, confirm the clinical suspicion for initiating appropriate targeted therapies.
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spelling pubmed-81585022021-05-28 A “Galactic” Chest X-ray Carbonelli, Cristiano de Matthaeis, Angela Mirijello, Antonio Di Micco, Concetta Maiello, Evaristo De Cosmo, Salvatore Graziano, Paolo Diagnostics (Basel) Interesting Images Clinical manifestations accompanying respiratory failure with insidious and rapidly progressive onset are often non-specific. Symptoms such as a cough, dyspnea, and fever are common to a large number of inflammatory, infectious, or neoplastic diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic it is essential to limit the use of hospital services and inappropriate diagnostic techniques. A particular radiological pattern can orient the clinical and laboratory scenario and guide the diagnostic workup. A 58-year-old woman was admitted to our COVID-19 unit for suspected coronavirus infection. She was complaining of worsening dyspnea, tachycardia, and low grade fever. A chest X-ray showed diffuse, alveolar, and interstitial lung involvement with micronodules tending to coalescence. This radiographic pattern known as “galaxy sign”, consistent with diffuse, coalescing nodular miliary pulmonary involvement, simulating a non-specific alveolar opacification of the lungs is typical of a few pneumological differential diagnoses, represented by sarcoidosis, tuberculosis, pneumoconiosis, and metastatic lesions, and virtually excludes an interstitial viral pneumonitis. The use of endoscopic techniques can, in such cases, confirm the clinical suspicion for initiating appropriate targeted therapies. MDPI 2021-05-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8158502/ /pubmed/34070198 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11050899 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Interesting Images
Carbonelli, Cristiano
de Matthaeis, Angela
Mirijello, Antonio
Di Micco, Concetta
Maiello, Evaristo
De Cosmo, Salvatore
Graziano, Paolo
A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title_full A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title_fullStr A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title_full_unstemmed A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title_short A “Galactic” Chest X-ray
title_sort “galactic” chest x-ray
topic Interesting Images
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8158502/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34070198
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11050899
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