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Container CT scanner: a solution for modular emergency radiology department during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5152/dir.2021.20740

1305-3612

Zixing Huang, Shuang Zhao, Qi Leng, Shaoping Hu, Zhenlin Li, Bin Song,

COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies

Fangcang shelter hospitals, also known as makeshift hospitals, were developed and used for the first time in China to tackle the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak by providing medical care and disease monitoring for patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 who were isolated from their families and communities (1).Similarly, stand-alone computed tomography (CT) scanners, known as container CTs, were developed and used for the first time in China to perform CT examinations on patients with clinically mild to moderate COVID-19 who received supportive treatment at makeshift hospitals.These container CTs were first deployed outside makeshift hospital buildings and later also at some regular hospitals as stand-alone CT scanners designated for fever patients and confirmed COVID-19 patients.Chest CT images have been widely used to help with early diagnosis, assess the degree of pulmonary infectious involvement, monitor disease progression, and evaluate treatment effects (2).These CT examinations were originally performed in regular hospital settings with normally installed CT scanners.However, at makeshift hospitals that were converted from civil building facilities such as stadiums, schools, and exhibition halls, no space was available that could meet the shielding and radiation protection standards necessary to install CT scanners.Furthermore, during that critical pandemic period, many hospitals in Wuhan urgently needed to be equipped with more CT scanners to rapidly improve the imaging examination capabilities for patients with fever, suspected patients, and patients with confirmed COVID-19.Unfortunately, these hospitals usually lack readily available sites for rapid CT installations because it normally takes at least a month to build or remodel a CT shielding room even without the complications of the complete lockdown in Wuhan city.To figure out this issue, under tremendous pressure to rapidly install new CT scanners at both regular hospitals and makeshift hospitals, Chinese medical equipment companies worked closely with frontline radiologists and technologists and developed an innovative container CT, which functions as a modular emergency radiology department.To date, more than 140 container CTs have been installed at makeshift hospitals and regular hospitals in China since the COVID-19 outbreak.In this article, we presented a typical in-depth solution for container CT deployment in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.