Corona In Trauma: Should Asymptomatic Patients Be Treated Based On Chest X-Ray Findings?

Introduction: Regarding the high prevalence of asymptomatic infections, recognition of patients infected with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has turned into a challenging issue. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the prognosis of asymptomatic patients with abnormal CXR indicative of COVID-19 for two weeks. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included 40 patients who were referred to shahid hashemi nezhad hospital with trauma and underwent CXR. The patients were selected based on the purposive sampling method. The inclusion criteria were asymptomatic patients with trauma who were referred to our hospital and underwent chest CXR indicative of COVID-19. Demographic characteristics of the patients were recorded in a checklist. The real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assay was carried out to diagnose the novel COVID-19. Out of 40 patients, 23 cases had positive test results; however, the others did not perform the test. The patients were followed up for 30 days in terms of the progress of their respiratory disease. Furthermore, those in the hospital were controlled daily, and the discharged cases were followed up via telephone. Results: This study included 40 traumatic patients, and the majority of cases (n=29,72.5%,) were male. Upon admission, 37 (92.5%) cases had no signs of common cold, such as cough and fever. However, three (7.5%) patients had an occasional cough, and 10 (25%) cases remembered to have flu-like symptoms in the past two weeks. The mean hospital stay of the patients was estimated at 3.2±1.4 days. It should be noted that no death and respiratory distress syndromes occurred during the follow-up period. Conclusion: A favorable prognosis of asymptomatic patients with CXR indicative of COVID-19 was obtained in this study, and none of the cases developed critical forms of the disease. 

Keywords:

Asymptomatic infections , COVID-19 , Chest x-ray (CXR)