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Demographic, clinical, and paraclinical characteristics of COVID-19 pediatric cases in Zahedan, Iran
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  • Gholamreza Soleimani,
  • Fatemeh Akbarirad,
  • Elham shafighi shahri,
  • Seyyed Masoud Sajjadi
Gholamreza Soleimani
Zahedan University of Medical Sciences

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Fatemeh Akbarirad
Zahedan University of Medical Sciences
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Elham shafighi shahri
Zahedan University of Medical Sciences
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Seyyed Masoud Sajjadi
Zahedan University of Medical Sciences
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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.