Demographic, clinical, and paraclinical characteristics of COVID-19
pediatric cases in Zahedan, Iran
Abstract
Background Even though children seem to be less vulnerable to the
COVID-19 infection, still a diverse range of clinical presentations and
symptoms have been reported. We therefore aimed to have a comprehensive
study on the evaluation of clinical and paraclinical characteristics of
infected children. Methods We included all likely, suspected, and
confirmed cases of COVID-19 referred to the Ali-ibn-Abitaleb Hospital of
Zahedan. Patients were evaluated at admission time and during
hospitalization. Clinical, imaging, and laboratory results were
collected and statistically analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. Results
Out of the 42 studied children, 32 cases (76% of patients) developed
pneumonia. Fever (39 cases, 92.9% of patients), cough (26, 61.9%),
tachypnea at admission (24, 57.1%), and pharyngeal erythema (22,
52.4%) were the most common clinical presentations seen in more than
50% of patients. Regarding the imaging findings, ground-glass opacity,
seen in CT scan, was the most common (23, 54.8%). Chest X-ray also
showed bilateral haziness in 19 patients (45.2%). The mean
hospitalization duration was 7.55 nights, and patients on average had
fever for 5.55 days. In laboratory findings, anomaly was more noticeable
for CRP (79% of patients) and ESR (69% of patients). Conclusion Even
though our population was small, most of the findings matched other
studies conducted on pediatric cases in Iran or other countries. It was
also found that some clinical features such as pneumonia, cough,
diarrhea, and tachycardia at admission time were statistically different
among age groups.