Early histologic findings of pulmonary SARS-CoV-2 infection detected in a surgical specimen
- PDF / 651,884 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 50 Downloads / 171 Views
BRIEF REPORT
Early histologic findings of pulmonary SARS-CoV-2 infection detected in a surgical specimen Angelina Pernazza 1 & Massimiliano Mancini 2 & Emma Rullo 3 & Massimiliano Bassi 4 & Tiziano De Giacomo 4 & Carlo Della Rocca 1 & Giulia d’Amati 3 Received: 2 April 2020 / Revised: 11 April 2020 / Accepted: 26 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Despite the current pandemic season, reports on pathologic features of coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19) are exceedingly rare at the present time. Here we describe the pathologic features of early lung involvement by Covid-19 in a surgical sample resected for carcinoma from a patient who developed SARS-CoV-2 infection soon after surgery. The main histologic findings observed were pneumocyte damage, alveolar hemorrhages with clustering of macrophages, prominent and diffuse neutrophilic margination within septal vessels, and interstitial inflammatory infiltrates, mainly represented by CD8+ T lymphocytes. These features are similar to those previously described in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Subtle histologic changes suggestive pulmonary involvement by Covid-19 may be accidentally encountered in routine pathology practice, especially when extensive sampling is performed for histology. These findings should be carefully interpreted in light of the clinical context of the patient and could prompt a pharyngeal swab PCR test to rule out the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection in asymptomatic patients. Keywords SARS-CoV-2 . Covid-19 . Pathology . Lung histology
Introduction Coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19) is a global pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). According to the WHO Covid-19 situation report of March 29, Italy is the most affected European country, with 92.472 total cases and 10.023 deaths. The virus is transmitted mainly by inhalation of respiratory droplets from both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Fever, fatigue, and dry cough are the most common symptoms at clinical presentation.
* Giulia d’Amati [email protected] 1
2
Department of Medico-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies, Polo Pontino-Sapienza University, 04100 Latina, Italy Division of Morphologic and Molecular S. Andrea Hospital, Sapienza, University of Rome, 00189 Rome, Italy
3
Department of Radiological, Oncological and Pathological Sciences, Sapienza, University of Rome, Policlinico Umberto I, Viale Regina Elena 324, 00161 Rome, Italy
4
Department of General and Specialistic Surgery “P. Stefanini”, Sapienza, University of Rome, 00161 Rome, Italy
Approximately 13–20% of infected individuals develop severe respiratory symptoms with radiological findings of interstitial involvement, requiring assisted oxygenation [1–3]. A low number of routine autopsies is performed due to the high infectivity of the disease; accordingly, there are only a few reports in medical literature describing the histopathologic findings of SARSCoV-2 infection [4, 5]. More in-depth investigations only come from SARS-Coronav
Data Loading...
