Current Pediatric Research

Background: Following the onset of the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China and its rapid spread worldwide, numerous clinical manifestations and laboratory findings of this disease have been reported in adults and to a lesser extent, in children. It seems that COVID-19 has different clinical manifestations, less severity and in some cases, more complications in children than adults. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate clinical symptoms and laboratory and imaging findings of children under 18 years of age hospitalized with COVID-19.
Methods: This historical cohort study was conducted from February 2020 to July 2021 on children under 18 years of age with suspected, probable and definite COVID-19 who were hospitalized in Shahid Sadoughi hospital, Yazd, Iran.
Results: Of 191 patients, 133, 26 and 32 patients were diagnosed as confirmed, probable, and suspect cases of COVID-19 disease, respectively. The participants included 95 (49.7%) boys and 96 (50.3%) girls with an average age of 6.5 years. Most patients (45.6%) were in the age range of 1 to 59 months. Patients’ most common clinical presentation at the time of hospitalization was general symptoms (40.4%), such as fever, weakness and fatigue, followed by respiratory symptoms (28.7%). During hospitalization, 82 patients underwent chest Computed Tomography (CT) scan of which ground glass opacities were reported in 41 cases.
Conclusion: The most common clinical manifestations in children with COVID-19 were fever, weakness and fatigue. The disease was more severe in patients with fever for more than five days. Furthermore, consolidation on chest CT scan was related to the severity of the disease.

 

Author(s): Farzad Ferdosian1*, Zahra Nafei1, Mehran Karimi1, Marzie Vaghefi1, Farimah Shamsi2, Danial Chaleshi3, Amir Pasha Amel Shahbaz4, Elahe Akbarian1

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