Japanese Journal of Radiology | 2021
Pulmonary artery trunk enlargement on admission as a predictor of mortality in in-hospital patients with COVID-19
Abstract
To describe the prognostic value of pulmonary artery (PA) trunk enlargement on the admission of in-hospital patients with severe COVID-19 infection by unenhanced CT image. In-hospital patients confirmed COVID-19 from January 18, 2020, to March 7, 2020, were retrospectively enrolled. PA trunk diameters on admission and death events were collected to calculate the optimum cutoff using a receiver operating characteristic curve. According to the cutoff, the subjects on admission were divided into two groups. Then the in-hospital various parameters were compared between the two groups to assess the predictive value of PA trunk diameter. In the 180 enrolled in-hospital patients (46.99\u2009±\u200914.95 years; 93 (51.7%) female, 14 patients (7.8%) died during their hospitalization. The optimum cutoff PA trunk diameter to predict in-hospital mortality was \u2009>\u200929 mm with a sensitivity of 92.59% and a specificity of 91.11%. Kaplan–Meier survival curves for PA trunk diameter on admission showed that a PA trunk diameter \u2009>\u200929 mm was a significant predictor of subsequent death (log-rank \u2009< 0.001, median survival time of PA\u2009>\u200929 mm was 28 days). PA trunk enlargement can be a useful predictive factor for distinguishing between mild and severe COVID-19 disease progression.