Differential diagnoses of COVID-19 pneumonia: the current challenge for the radiologist—a pictorial essay

• Main Authors: Alessia Guarnera, Pierfrancesco Podda, Elena Santini, Pasquale Paolantonio, Andrea Laghi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2021-03-01
• Series: Insights into Imaging
• Subjects: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Pneumonia; Differential diagnosis; Computed tomography
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13244-021-00967-x

Abstract Background COVID-19 pneumonia represents the most severe pandemic of the twenty-first century and has crucial clinical, social and economical implications. The scientific community has focused attention and resources on clinical and radiological features of COVID-19 pneumonia. Few papers analysing the vast spectrum of differential diagnoses have been published. Main body Complexity of differential diagnosis lays in the evidence of similar radiological findings as ground-glass opacities, crazy paving pattern and consolidations in COVID-19 pneumonia and a multitude of other lung diseases. Differential diagnosis is and will be extremely important during and after the pandemic peak, when there are fewer COVID-19 pneumonia cases. The aim of our pictorial essay is to schematically present COVID-19 pneumonia most frequent differential diagnoses to help the radiologist face the current COVID-19 pneumonia challenge. Conclusions Clinical data, laboratory tests and imaging are pillars of a trident, which allows to reach a correct diagnosis in order to grant an excellent allocation of human and economical resources. The radiologist has a pivotal role in the early diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia because he may raise suspicion of the pathology and help to avoid COVID-19 virus spread.