Coronavirus Pandemic Impact on Pediatric Presentation and Severity of the Access to E.D.

Background: The 2019 coronavirus epidemic (CoViD -19) in Italy originated in Lombardy, on February 21, 2020. The Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo di Pavia has been involved in the management of the outbreak since its beginning.Our E.R. welcomes pediatric patients with trauma (serious trauma, minor trauma, burns ..) or with strictly dermatological or ENT specialist problems. For medical access there is an other dedicated E.R. in the Foundation

Purpose: We evaluated all the pediatric population who went to our ED to assess the severity of cases evaluated as exit code and rate of hospitalization and we compared it with the same period of the previous year.

Materials and Methods: We evaluated all pediatric patients accessing our ED form February 22 to May 1, 2020 and during the same period of the previous year.

Results and discussion: We enrolled 1225 patients. There was a severe reduction in total number of accesses: 177 in CoViD period and 1048 in 2019. Vital parameters, age and sex were overlapping without statistically significant differences. CoViD pandemic patients have higher codes (yellow-red) for the medical examination (7.4% vs 13.6%); discharge severity codes (red) more frequently than in the reference period (9% vs 4.1%) and more frequently need hospitalization (10.7% vs 3.8%).

Conclusion: the epidemic has led to a reduction of pediatric accesses. Patients had more frequent hospitalization needs and more severe exit codes. the data may be due to the fact that during the pandemic only the most serious patients access the E.D.