Tomographic findings and mortality in patients with severe and critical pneumonia with COVID-19 diagnosis

INTRODUCTION: A high percentage of patients with non-severe (17.9%) and severe (2.9%) atypical pneumonia do not display pulmonary tomographic findings upon hospital admission; furthermore, lesion associated with COVI-19 are peripherally distributed in a multifocal ground-glass pattern, as well as displaying an irregular consolidation pattern, with a posterior or lower lobe predilection. The main objective of this study was to identify the pulmonary radiological patterns in patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia, the factors associated with the need for mechanical ventilation, as well as their survival rates at 30 days. METHODS: We report the pulmonary tomographic findings of 490 consecutive patients with severe and critical pneumonia due to SARS-CoV-2. The patients were classified according to the tomography and demographic findings, sepsis severity prognostic scales, Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA), and the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE IV). The Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate survival distributions. RESULTS: 89.80% of patients had ground-glass opacities, 81.63% radiologic consolidation sign, 42.45% vascular thickening pattern, 37.55% lymphadenopathies, 14.90% pleural effusion, and 2.65% pulmonary thrombosis; meanwhile, 91.02% had bilateral lesions, 85.51% had peripheral lesions, and 75.92% had basal lobe lesions. APACHE IV (HR, 1.191, 95% CI [1.126, 1.260]), SOFA (HR, 5.178, 95%CI [3.103, 8.641]), and CCI (HR, 0.673, 95%CI [0.510, 0.889]), as well as the pulmonary damage severity index (HR, 1.282, 95%CI [1.151, 1.428]), predict the need for invasive mechanical ventilation. Only moderate ARDS patients with mild and severe lung disease showed different 30-day mortality distributions (χ(2) = 7.00, p = 0.008). DISCUSSION: Although the survival distributions did not vary significantly, an overwhelming majority of patients (i.e., 84.35%) with a higher pulmonary damage severity index (i.e., 23>) died within 30 days of hospital admission, while only 25.91% with moderate lung damage and 2.42% with mild lung damage.