Assessment of pulmonary arterial circulation 3 months after hospitalization for SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia: Dual-energy CT (DECT) angiographic study in 55 patients

March 30, 2021

Martine Remy-Jardin Louise Duthoit Thierry Perez Paul Felloni Jean Baptiste Faivre Stéphanie Fry Nathalie Bautin Cécile Chenivesse Jacques Remy Alain Duhamel

EClinicalMedicine The Lancet

The study’s objective was to investigate the morphologic and perfusion changes within pulmonary circulation three months after hospitalization for COVID-19 pneumonia in a cohort of 55 patients with persistent respiratory symptoms who underwent dual-energy (DE) CT angiography. Pulmonary arterial circulation in patients' follow-up remained symptomatic three months after hospitalization for SARSCoV-2, 27.3% had complete clearance, and 72.7% had residual abnormalities. In the latter group, lung parenchymal abnormalities consisted of ground-glass opacities, mostly mild attenuation and diffusely distributed. Seven patients had an evolution toward lung fibrosis, showing bronchial/bronchiolar dilatation within areas of ground-glass attenuation. CT angiography revealed endoluminal filling defects in 3 patients (5.4% of the study population). There were bilateral filling defects in central and peripheral pulmonary arteries in one patient, whereas in the remaining two patients were seen in one or two segmental arteries of a single lobe s. Disseminated patchy perfusion defects were the most frequent finding, observed in 30 patients (30/36; 83.0%). The second finding was PE-type perfusion defects, depicted in 6 patients (6/36; 16.6%). One patient had multiple bilateral PE-type defects, explained by obstructive segmental and subsegmental clots. In the absence of previous history of an acute thromboembolic event, the authors hypothesized that these vascular changes might correspond to the histopathological findings of intussusceptive angiogenesis reported in autopsy studies, describing the striking neovessels growth in severe COVID-19 pneumonia. This study suffers from several limitations, like the absence of a control group.

Remy M, Duthoit L, Perez T. Assessment of pulmonary arterial circulation 3 months after hospitalization for SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia: Dual-energy CT (DECT) angiographic study in 55 patients. The Lancet 2021; 34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.100778

Partners