The Role of Emergency Radiology in COVID-19: From Preparedness to Diagnosis

Emergency trauma radiology, although a relatively new subspecialty of radiology, plays a critical role in both the diagnosis/triage of acutely ill patients, but even more important in providing leadership and taking the lead in the preparedness of imaging departments in dealing with novel highly infectious communicable diseases and mass casualties. This has become even more apparent in dealing with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, first emerged in late 2019. We review the symptoms, epidemiology, and testing for this disease. We discuss characteristic imaging findings of COVID-19 in relation to other modern coronavirus diseases including SARS and MERS. We discuss roles that community radiology clinics, outpatient radiology departments, and emergency radiology departments can play in the diagnosis of this disease. We review practical methods to reduce spread of infections within radiology departments.