Consensus Offers Best Practices for Post-COVID-19 Residual Abnormalities on Chest CT

FRIDAY, July 25, 2025 (HealthDay News) — In an international multisociety consensus statement, published online July 22 in Radiology, recommendations are presented for computed tomography (CT) imaging in patients with residual lung abnormalities after COVID-19 respiratory infection.

Noting that residual lung abnormalities on CT scans after COVID-19 respiratory infection have been described using various terms, Soon Ho Yoon, M.D., Ph.D., from the Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea, and colleagues developed a multisociety consensus statement to standardize the indication, acquisition, and reporting of post-COVID-19 residual lung abnormalities on CT scans.

The recommendations include use of chest CT in patients with persistent or progressive respiratory symptoms at three months after infection, use of low-dose CT protocols for follow-up CT examinations, use of radiological descriptors from the Fleischner Society glossary of terms, and avoidance of the term “interstitial lung abnormality” for description of post-COVID-19 abnormalities. The term “post-COVID-19 residual lung abnormality” should be used to prevent misinterpretation of post-COVID-19 abnormalities as an early manifestation of interstitial lung disease.

“These statements recommend employing terms from the Fleischner Society Glossary to describe CT findings consistently and precisely, avoiding the use of “interstitial lung abnormality,” which refers to a different clinical context,” coauthor Anna Rita Larici, M.D., from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome, said in a statement. “In addition, we have coined and recommended the term “post-COVID-19 residual lung abnormality” to prevent any misleading term when describing CT lung abnormalities following COVID-19 pneumonia.”

Several authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical, medical device, and other industries.

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