Caracterización clínica-demográfica y complicaciones de pacientes pediátricos con COVID-19 en el Hospital General del Norte de Guayaquil IESS “Los Ceibos”

Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical community has faced several challenges, with the pediatric population being affected in unique ways. These patients tended to predominantly have milder clinical presentations, relative to their adult counterparts, but 3 with the possibility of atypical presenting symptoms and complications exclusive to said cohort. This, unsurprisingly, generated a need for research that focused on detailing the clinical features and description of possible complications, to better treat and prevent any delays in these patients’ management. Hence, this study aims to tackle this by gathering 265 medical records from pediatric patients older than 1 month and younger than 18 years of age, that presented to a secondary level general hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, between August of 2020 and February of 2022. The obtained results were consistent with existing literature reports in some aspects, such as the correlation of an older age and more severe symptoms. However, we also found differences, such as a higher prevalence of MIS-C in children younger than 6 years, and the presence of atypical symptoms such as polyarthralgia, petechiae and conjunctival hyperemia. The main limitation in this study is the inability to generalize the findings to other populations given the single-center design. Thus, it can be concluded that, research surrounding SARS-CoV-2 is far from finished within the pediatric population and within the country, with a clear need for further research that focuses on the long-term effects of this disease.