Clinical and radiological characteristics of pediatric patients with COVID-19: focus on imaging findings.
PURPOSE
CT imaging has been a detrimental tool in the diagnosis of COVID-19, but it has not been studied thoroughly in pediatric patients and its role in diagnosing COVID-19.


METHODS
27 pediatric patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were included. CT examination and molecular assay tests were performed from all participants. A standard checklist was utilized to extract information, and two radiologists separately reviewed the CT images.


RESULTS
The mean age of patients was 4.7 ± 4.16 (mean ± SD) years. Seventeen patients were female, and ten were male. The most common imaging finding was ground-glass opacities followed by consolidations. Seven patients had a single area of involvement, five patients had multiple areas of involvement, and four patients had diffuse involvement. The sensitivity of CT imaging in diagnosing infections was 66.67%. Also, some uncommon imaging findings were seen, such as a tree-in-bud and lung collapse.


CONCLUSION
CT imaging shows less involvement in pediatric compared to adult patients, due to pediatric patients having a milder form of the disease. CT imaging also has a lower sensitivity in detecting abnormal lungs compared to adult patients. The most common imaging findings are ground-glass opacities and consolidations, but other non-common imaging findings also exist.
['Mohammadi|Afshin|A|', 'Mohebbi|Iraj|I|', 'Khademvatani|Kamal|K|', 'Pirnejad|Habibollah|H|', 'Mirza-Aghazadeh|Javad|J|', 'Gharebaghi|Naser|N|', 'Abbasian Ardakani|Ali|A|', 'Mirza-Aghazadeh-Attari|Mohammad|M|']
D000073640:Betacoronavirus D000086382:COVID-19 D002648:Child D002675:Child, Preschool D018352:Coronavirus Infections D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008168:Lung D008297:Male D058873:Pandemics D010372:Pediatrics D011024:Pneumonia, Viral D000086402:SARS-CoV-2 D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
Pediatrics COVID-19 Coronavirus infections SARS-CoV-2 Tomography X-ray computed