The Effect of Hepatosteatosis on the Course of Chest CT Severity Scores in COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

Background/Aims: In the literature, the temporal variation of CT severity score (CT-SS) values on consecutive CTs, which is an indicator of pneumonia severity, according to the presence of hepatosteatosis was not evaluated. We aimed to investigate the effect of hepatosteatosis on the temporal change of CT-SS in COVID-19 patients. Material and Methods: Our retrospective study included 472 RT-PCR positive COVID-19 patients ( ? 18 years old) admitted to our hospital between December 2021 and January 2022. Chest CT severity scores ranging from 0 to 5 were assigned to each lobe of the lung and total CT-SS was obtained. For quantitative analysis, if the hepatic/splenic attenuation ratio was <1, hepatosteatosis was defined. Wilcoxon test was used to evaluate the temporal changes of CT-SS values relative to the presence of hepatosteatosis. p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Of the total 472 patients, 255/472 (54%) were hepatosteatosis-positive. The frequency of hepatosteatosis was significantly higher in male patients, 167/255 (65.5%) (p<0.001). The mean age was 64.04±14.35 years. There was no significant difference between ICU admission and hepatosteatosis groups (p=0.269). There was no significant difference between mortality and the presence of hepatosteatosis (p=0.429). There was a significant increase between the 1st and the 2nd CT-SS in patients with hepatosteatosis (p<0.001). The increase in the second CT-SS was higher in patients with hepatosteatosis than in patients without hepatosteatosis. Conclusion: Hepatosteatosis may be an indicator of poor prognosis in the temporal change of pneumonia severity in COVID-19 patients.