Visual lung damage CT score at hospital admission of COVID-19 patients and 30-day mortality.

Objectives: Chest CT has been widely used to screen and to evaluate the severity of COVID-19 disease in the early stages of infection without severe acute respiratory syndrome, but no prospective data are available to study the relationship between extent of lung damage and short-term mortality. The objective was to evaluate association between standardized simple visual lung damage CT score (vldCTs) at admission, which does not require any software, and 30-day mortality.

Methods: In a single-center prospective cohort of COVID-19 patients included during 4 weeks, the presence and extent of ground glass opacities(GGO), consolidation opacities, or both of them were visually assessed in each of the 5 lung lobes (score from 0 to 4 per lobe depending on the percentage and out of 20 per patient = vldCTs) after the first chest CT performed to detect COVID-19 pneumonia.

Isolated aspergillosis myocardial abscesses in a liver-transplant patient.

Cardiac abscess is an uncommon and fatal complication after transplantation. We report a case of an initially isolated aspergillosis myocardial abscess diagnosed by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI). At that time, there was no other biological evidence or other extracardiac manifestations.

Severe excessive dynamic airway collapse in a patient with primary Sjögren's syndrome.

Airway and cystic lung diseases can be observed in patients with Sjögren's syndrome. We report a case of such a patient suffering from respiratory failure due to recurrent episodes of right pneumothorax, requiring invasive mechanical ventilation. Despite thoracic drainage and adequate pneumothorax management, the patient could not be weaned from the ventilator.

Type B intramural hematoma of the aorta: evolution and prognostic value of intimal erosion.

Purpose: The prognosis and treatment of type B intramural hematoma (IMH) remain unclear. Intimal erosions could be the target of preventive endovascular treatment, but we have no therapeutic criterion on which to decide preventive treatment.

Materials And Methods: A prospective multislice computed tomography (CT) study was carried out in 44 patients with type B IMH to assess morphologic evolution and intimal erosion to determine reliable predictive factors that would permit endovascular treatment.

Thyroid cartilage ossification and multislice computed tomography examination: a useful tool for age assessment?

Many authors have studied the thyroid cartilage ossification process using radiographic features for age estimation of individuals. Their results were various: Sugiyama reported excellent correlation coefficients between ossification rates and civil age, unlike most other authors. We hypothesized that recent advances in imaging techniques would enable more precise evaluation of the ossification of the thyroid cartilage.