Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. May 25, 2021; 10(3): 130-136
Published online May 25, 2021. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v10.i3.130
Chest radiography requirements for patients with asymptomatic COVID-19 undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery: Three case reports
Amr Salah Omar, Bassam Shoman, Suraj Sudarsanan, Yasser Shouman
Amr Salah Omar, Bassam Shoman, Suraj Sudarsanan, Yasser Shouman, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Heart Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha 3050, DA, Qatar
Amr Salah Omar, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Beni Suef University, Beni Suef 3050, DA, Qatar
Amr Salah Omar, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha 3050, DA, Qatar
Author contributions: Omar AS performed the concept, writing and manuscript revision; Shoman B performed the study design, contribution to the concepts and revising the final form; Sudarsanan S performed the data management and manuscript revision; Shouman Y performed the critical revision and cases review; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Hamad Medical Corporation.
Informed consent statement: All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrolment. This study was approved by medical research center in Hamad Medical Corporation. The ethical committee in Hamad medical corporation approved the study (reference number MRC 04-20-586), all study data were maintained anonymously.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Amr Salah Omar, MBChB, MSc, PhD, Professor, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Heart Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Alryan road, Doha 3050, DA, Qatar. a_s_omar@yahoo.com
Received: January 6, 2021
Peer-review started: January 6, 2021
First decision: January 25, 2021
Revised: February 3, 2021
Accepted: March 31, 2021
Article in press: March 31, 2021
Published online: May 25, 2021
Processing time: 132 Days and 2.9 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2, represents a major challenge to health care systems both globally and regionally, with many opting by cancelling elective surgeries. Cardiac operations in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 have been imperative due to their emergency nature, critical condition of patients awaiting cardiac surgery, and accumulated number of cardiac surgical interventions throughout the last months.

CASE SUMMARY

Here we describe three COVID-19 positive cases who underwent coronary surgery, on an urgent basis. We did not experience worsening of the patients’ clinical condition due to COVID-19 and therefore a routine post-operative chest X-ray (CXR) was not required. None of the health care providers attending the patients endured cross infection. Further trials would be needed in order to confirm these results.

CONCLUSION

While the pandemic has adversely hit the health systems worldwide, cardiac surgical patients who concomitantly contracted COVID-19 may undergo a smooth post-operative course as a routine post-operative CXR may not be required.

Keywords: COVID-19, Cardiac surgery, Outcome, Radiography, Critical care, Case report

Core Tip: Routine chest radiology is considered one of the core components of the post-operative care in cardiac surgery settings, there may be additional benefits in patients with associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection to check the possible lung involvement. However, we found that routine chest radiology may not be required for post-operative care in COVID-19 patients undergoing cardiac surgery. This may reduce overall costs and radiographer’s unnecessary exposure.