COVID-19 Imaging in a Tertiary Care Setting – The Zurich Approach

Özet

The COVID-19 pandemic not only poses an existential threat to the entire society but also constitutes a major challenge for hospitals, which cannot be met without interdisciplinary teamwork. For radiological institutions trade-offs need to be made between radiological imaging capacity required for timely diagnosis of COVID-19, resources available for non-COVID-19 associated diseases as well as the risk of infection to healthcare co-workers such as technicians and radiologists. In this work, we describe the scheme imposed at the University Hospital Zurich (Switzerland). The core of the Zurich approach is early triaging of patients into four categories with either (i) proven COVID-19, (ii) high-risk of COVID-19, (iii) low risk of COVID-19, and (iv) no suspicion of COVID-19, with subsequent procedures including a separation of patient pathways taking into account the availability of imaging modalities and protection measures for exposed healthcare workers. With the imposed measures, we were able to avoid any infections to healthcare workers at our hospital over a 3 months period during the height of the COVID-19 crisis in spring 2020. We hope to provide helpful insights for radiological institutions preparing for or coping with the COVID-19 pandemic with the following description.