Chest CT-scan scoring
These patients had previously undergone chest CT-scan in the acute phase
of the infection. A ”Lung Total Severity Score” (LTSS) done by a
radiologist at that time designated the severity of lung infiltration.
This scoring which was based on the method introduced by Kunwei Li et
al. (9), was calculated by assessing each
of the lung lobes and assigning a score to them (from 0 to 4) based upon
the percentage of ground-glass opacity or consolidation as follows: 0
(0%), 1 (1-25%), 2 (26-50%), 3 (51-75%), or 4 (76-100%). Then, the
sum of all the lobes’ scores gave out the TLSS, which was expected to be
a number ranging from 0-20. According to this scoring, we divided the
patients into two categories. LTSS=0 delineated no lung involvement, and
LTSS≥ 1 was considered to have some extent of lung involvement.