• Soon Ho Yoon, Kyung Hee Lee, Jin Yong Kim, Young Kyung Lee, Hongseok Ko, Ki Hwan Kim, Chang Min Park, and Yun Hyeon Kim.
• Department of Radiology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea. yshoka@gmail.com.
• Korean J Radiol. 2020 Apr 1; 21 (4): 494-500.

ObjectiveThis study presents a preliminary report on the chest radiographic and computed tomography (CT) findings of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pneumonia in Korea.Materials And MethodsAs part of a multi-institutional collaboration coordinated by the Korean Society of Thoracic Radiology, we collected nine patients with COVID-19 infections who had undergone chest radiography and CT scans. We analyzed the radiographic and CT findings of COVID-19 pneumonia at baseline. Fisher's exact test was used to compare CT findings depending on the shape of pulmonary lesions.ResultsThree of the nine patients (33.3%) had parenchymal abnormalities detected by chest radiography, and most of the abnormalities were peripheral consolidations. Chest CT images showed bilateral involvement in eight of the nine patients, and a unilobar reversed halo sign in the other patient. In total, 77 pulmonary lesions were found, including patchy lesions (39%), large confluent lesions (13%), and small nodular lesions (48%). The peripheral and posterior lung fields were involved in 78% and 67% of the lesions, respectively. The lesions were typically ill-defined and were composed of mixed ground-glass opacities and consolidation or pure ground-glass opacities. Patchy to confluent lesions were primarily distributed in the lower lobes (p = 0.040) and along the pleura (p < 0.001), whereas nodular lesions were primarily distributed along the bronchovascular bundles (p = 0.006).ConclusionCOVID-19 pneumonia in Korea primarily manifested as pure to mixed ground-glass opacities with a patchy to confluent or nodular shape in the bilateral peripheral posterior lungs. A considerable proportion of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia had normal chest radiographs.Copyright © 2020 The Korean Society of Radiology.

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