Association Between Histopathological Changes in Mitral Valvular Tissues and Disease Severity in Rheumatic Heart Disease Cases
Abstract:
Background: MCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first described in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and de clared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. The present study aimed to characterize the clinical and chest computed tomography (CT) findings in a sample of patients with COVID-19 and to correlate them with the outcome of death. The specific objectives were to characterize the sample epidemiologically and to describe the tomographic patterns found. This retrospective, observational, and cross-sectional study analyzed as sociations between chest CT findings and outcomes in COVID-19 patients from a university hospital in southeastern Brazil, from April 2020 to June 2021. The most frequent symptoms included cough, dyspnea, fever, myalgia, chest pain, anosmia, and odynophagia. Common CT findings, in descending order, were ground-glass opacities, consolida tions, mosaic paving, parenchymal bands, peribronchovascular consolidations, bronchial ectasia, subpleural lines, nodules with ground-glass halos, architectural distortion, and ground-glass bands. Patients with age ≥60 years and comorbidities were significant risk factors for mortality. Patients with >50% parenchymal involvement and indeter minate/atypical CT patterns also had a higher risk of death. While serological tests remain critical for diagnosis, this study highlights the importance of imaging in guiding treatment protocols, especially given the delays in test results.
