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As if the management of patients with severe COVID-19 infections is not complicated enough, an estimated 50%–60% of patients admitted to an ICU with the disease will have some form of cardiovascular involvement, which further increases their already high risk for morbidity and mortality.
Multimodality cardiovascular imaging, chosen wisely, can both help to direct management of cardiovascular complications associated with COVID-19 and lessen risk of exposure of health care workers to SARS-CoV-2, said members of an expert panel from the American College of Cardiology Cardiovascular Imaging Leadership Council.
"When we face a patient with known or suspected COVID-19, it's not like any other disease because we face potential exposure risk to personnel doing imaging studies and also to other patients," corresponding author Marcelo F. Di Carli, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston, said in an interview.
"Any imaging study that is being considered should be performed only if we think it will help us make a change in the way that we're going to treat that particular patient. This is true for imaging in any disease — why would you do an imaging study that will make no difference in treatment?
