Abstract
BackgroundPediatric COVID-19 is relatively mild and may vary from that in adults. This study was to investigate the epidemic, clinical, and imaging features of pediatric COVID-19 pneumonia for early diagnosis and treatment.MethodsForty-one children infected with COVID-19 were analyzed in the epidemic, clinical and imaging data.ResultsAmong 30 children with mild COVID-19, seven had no symptoms, fifteen had low or mediate fever, and eight presented with cough, nasal congestion, diarrhea, headache, or fatigue. Among eleven children with moderate COVID-19, nine presented with low or mediate fever, accompanied with cough and runny nose, and two had no symptoms. Significantly (P < 0.05) more children had a greater rate of cough in moderate than in mild COVID-19. Thirty children with mild COVID-19 were negative in pulmonary CT imaging, whereas eleven children with moderate COVID-19 had pulmonary lesions, including ground glass opacity in ten (90.9%), patches of high density in six (54.5%), consolidation in three (27.3%), and enlarged bronchovascular bundles in seven (63.6%). The lesions were distributed along the bronchus in five patients (45.5%). The lymph nodes were enlarged in the pulmonary hilum in two patients (18.2%). The lesions were presented in the right upper lobe in two patients (18.1%), right middle lobe in one (9.1%), right lower lobe in six (54.5%), left upper lobe in five (45.5%), and left lower lobe in eight (72.7%).ConclusionsChildren with COVID-19 have mild or moderate clinical and imaging presentations. A better understanding of the clinical and CT imaging helps ascertaining those with negative nucleic acid and reducing misdiagnosis rate for those with atypical and concealed symptoms.
Highlights
Pediatric COVID-19 is relatively mild and may vary from that in adults
(P < 0.05) more children had cough in moderate than mild COVID-19, but no significance existed in other data including age, sex, fever and other accompanied symptoms (Table 1)
This study investigated the epidemic, clinical, and imaging presentations of all children who had been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 in our hospitals, and it was found that all children with COVID-19 were of mild and moderate type
Summary
Pediatric COVID-19 is relatively mild and may vary from that in adults. The Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pneumonia caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) which broke out in December, 2019, has become a pandemic worldwide, Zhang et al Italian Journal of Pediatrics (2020) 46:153 symptoms were the primary source of spread through close contact and respiratory droplets as the major person-to-person transmission channels, and a family cluster is the main epidemic spread of COVID-19 in children [8]. Pediatric COVID-19 infection is relatively mild in comparison to that of adults, and children with this disease have been reported to have a better prognosis with rare mortality [11, 14, 15]. Fatal outcomes in pediatric COVID-19 pneumonia are rare, and up to June 2020, only a few deaths have been reported in children with COVID-19 [17, 18]
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