Impact of COVID pandemic upon radiological services in a tertiary care hospital - A clinical audit

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Radiology emerged as one of the frontline clinical services in the COVID-19 pandemic. This audit study aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the radiological services in a tertiary care hospital in terms of workload and case mix. METHODS: We compared the overall workload of the radiology department between March 2019 to December 2020, emphasizing the number of CTs and Chest radiographs performed during the pandemic. The first period starting when the first confirmed case presented to our hospital and the second control period in the same months in 2019. The imaging parameters included the total number of CTs, MRIs, Ultrasounds, Radiographs, CTs from the emergency room (ER), OPD, IPD, CT chest performed for COVID-19 and other emergency indications. All parameters were calculated by taking average each month in both study periods. RESULTS: An overall decrease was observed in the number of all primary imaging modalities during the pandemic, with ultrasound showing a maximum reduction in numbers (36.5%) followed by radiographs (29.6%) and MRIs (13.8%) compared to 2019. However, total CTs showed a minimal decrease of 1.6% with a significant leap in HRCTs performed reaching up to 80.5%. CONCLUSION: COVID-19 and resultant movement restrictions, although they did lead to a reduction in overall radiology work volume, were compensated by an increase in the number of studies performed through emergency and for management of COVID-19 infection.