Role of Imaging in diagnosis of Neurological complications of COVID -19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a challenging world issue after its emergence in December 2019. Despite its most characteristic symptom of respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 have also shown neurologic manifestations. Acute ischemic stroke is found to be the most common complication among adult group followed by Post-COVID invasive fungal sinusitis. Among the children, the neurological complications are rare but severe and variable. This necessitates further studying these complications in the pediatric population, in conjunction with but separately from adults, as many aspects of the illness course may differ greatly. It is noted that sometimes the neurological manifestations can precede the typical features like fever and cough and later on typical manifestations develop in these patients. Hence a high index of suspicion is required for timely diagnosis and isolation of cases to prevent the spread in neurology wards. In this regard, radiologists and clinicians should be familiar with the spectrum of neuroimaging findings in COVID-19 to detect and understand the disease process, and to evaluate its progression during the course of treatment.