Russian doctors are talking about another side effect of the coronavirus pandemic – CT hysteria, which began in society. Almost all patients who have even minor symptoms of ARVI require them to be sent to computed tomography of the lungs, and if they do not receive referrals, they are recorded in paid centers. On the one hand, the total dose of radiation is growing, on the other hand, general diagnosis sometimes leads to the detection of diseases that are not related in coronavirus at all.
In an environment where even leading experts recognize that every second PCR assay produces a false positive or false negative result, radiation diagnosis certainly plays an important role in the diagnosis of pneumonia. And CT in recent months has become one of their most advanced studies.
In urban CT centers, patients sit (and sometimes lie) in queues for several hours, in private receptions are scheduled for several days in advance. People who suspect that the virus got into their lungs tend to do CT scans by all means, even if they have no cough, no shortness of breath, no chest pain, and sometimes no temperature.
On the other hand, experts emphasize that detecting a lung lesion of 6 or 15% will not affect treatment tactics in any way. Igor Tyurin, chief specialist in radiation diagnostics at the Ministry of Health of Russia, emphasizes that the course of the disease often does not depend on whether the patient has detected pneumonia on the CT scan or not: “This, of course, does not apply to patients with obvious severe respiratory failure. But it is impossible to do CT out of curiosity, as well as it is impossible to carry out this study for prevention, as those who have fallen ill at home are striving to make it today. “
“COVID-19 is not only a violation of sense of smell, high fever, weakness, coughing and difficulty breathing, but also panic fear. Fear caused by quite objective reasons and repeatedly intensified by universal hysteria. Computed tomography becomes the gold standard for diagnosis, despite the fact that the changes on it are nonspecific and do not change anything in the tactics of action, and radiation is quite real and completely unsafe, “said the famous Dr. Pavel Brand.
Doctor-cardiologist, doctor of the red zone, associate professor of the medical faculty of Sechenov University Anton Rodionov urges people not to do CT scans on their own: “I can only repeat after my colleagues that they are treating not CT, but the patient. And CT changes do not affect treatment tactics. “
“CT should be carried out when the patient has moderate and severe COVID-19,” said Igor Sergienko, a red zone doctor, cardiologist, professor at the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Cardiology of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation. “One cannot but say that visiting CT centers is dangerous because you can get a new coronavirus, and mass visits there healthy people accelerate the spread of the pandemic.
