AccScience Publishing / EJMO / Volume 4 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.14744/ejmo.2020.68370
LETTER TO THE EDITOR

COVID-19 Imaging in a Tertiary Care Setting – The Zurich Approach

Victor Mergen1 Annelies Zinkernagel2 Dagmar I. Keller3 Thomas Frauenfelder1 Hatem Alkadhi1 Andreas Boss1
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1 Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Zurich, University Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
2 Institute for Emergency Medicine, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
3 Department of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Zurich, University Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
EJMO 2020, 4(3), 260–263; https://doi.org/10.14744/ejmo.2020.68370
Submitted: 6 June 2020 | Accepted: 6 July 2020 | Published: 16 July 2020
© 2020 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic not only poses an existential threat to the entire society, but also poses a major challenge for hospitals, which cannot be met without interdisciplinary teamwork. For radiological institutions, trade-offs need to be made between radiological imaging capacity required for timely diagnosis of COVID-19, available resources for nonCOVID-19-related diseases as well as the risk of infection to healthcare co-workers such as technicians and radiologists. In this study, we describe the scheme implemented at the University Hospital Zurich (Switzerland). The essence of the Zurich approach is early triaging of patients into four categories with either (i) proven COVID-19, (ii) high-risk of COVID-19, (iii) low risk of COVID-19, and (iv) no suspicion of COVID-19, with subsequent procedures including separation of patient pathways taking into account the availability of imaging modalities and protection measures for exposed healthcare workers. With the imposed measures, we were able to avoid any infections to healthcare workers at our hospital over a 3 months period at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in spring 2020. We hope to provide helpful insights for radiological institutions preparing for or coping with the COVID-19 pandemic with the following description. 

Keywords
COVID-19
health care worker
management
protection
radiology department
Conflict of interest
None declared.
References

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Eurasian Journal of Medicine and Oncology, Electronic ISSN: 2587-196X Print ISSN: 2587-2400, Published by AccScience Publishing