Dear AuntMinnie.com Member,
A radiologist from a Toronto hospital that has treated patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) described the imaging characteristics of the disease in a presentation this week at the American Roentgen Ray Society meeting in San Diego. Staff editor Jonathan S. Batchelor was on hand to report on the presentation for AuntMinnie’s X-Ray Digital Community.
Dr. Narinder Paul of Princess Margaret Hospital discussed his facility’s experience with the disease that has terrified the world since it began to spread rapidly over the past several months. Paul detailed the hospital’s procedures for both diagnosing SARS patients, and isolating them to prevent its transmission.
Radiologists at Princess Margaret have found that a single-view chest exam with a portable x-ray unit is perhaps the best modality for imaging the disease. About 75% of the patients found to have SARS have abnormal radiographs, and the use of a mobile unit helps the facility maintain its isolation policies as much as possible, he said.
Radiological signs of SARS include unilateral focal airspace opacity in the lung, present in nearly half the SARS cases seen at the hospital. In nearly a third of all cases, patients had either bilateral multifocal opacities or diffuse opacities. Patients with diffuse disease have suffered the highest death rate in Toronto, a finding matched by physicians coping with the outbreak in China.
For more information, and to see the images for yourself, just go to our X-Ray Digital Community, at x-ray.auntminnie.com. And be sure to return to AuntMinnie this week as we continue to provide reporting from the ARRS conference, followed by the Society for Pediatric Radiology meeting in San Francisco.
