ArticleItalian journal of pediatrics2021
Pediatric emergency department visits during the COVID-19 pandemic: a large retrospective population-based study.
Article in Italian journal of pediatrics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Pediatric Emergency Medicine: A Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Pooled it
- Emergency department visits and disease patterns during and after the COVID-19 lockdown.PloS one · 2026Observational
- COVID-19 pandemic as an effect modifier on the association between elevated temperatures and emergency department visits: A case-time-series study in a large population.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2025Article
- Article
- Pre-COVID era pediatric disease incidence in Kazakhstan: regional panel data analysis of multiple disease groups (2010-2019).Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Severe and invasive bacterial infections in infants aged less than 90 days with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection.Italian journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Traumatic brain injury incidence and mortality: a large population-based study.Journal of neurology · 2024Article
- A Comparative Analysis of Pediatric Emergency Department Admissions Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Cureus · 2024Article
- Changes in emergency department visits and mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective analysis of 956 hospitals.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2024Article
- Diagnostic testing for chest pain in a pediatric emergency department and rates of cardiac disease before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2024Article
- Why has the epidemiology of RSV changed during the COVID-19 pandemic?EClinicalMedicine · 2023Review
- Pediatric Dog Bites to the Face May Have Been Less Severe During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Journal of oral and maxillofacial surgery : official journal of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons · 2023Article
- Suicide spectrum among young people during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis.EClinicalMedicine · 2022Article
- The year 2021 in COVID-19 pandemic in children.Italian journal of pediatrics · 2022Review
- Dental Emergencies in an Italian Pediatric Hospital during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCOVID-19 pandemic has stretched healthcare system capacities worldwide and deterred people from seeking medical support at Emergency Departments (ED). Nevertheless, population-based studies examining the consequences on children are lacking.
methodsAll ED visits from 2019 to 2020 in Veneto, Italy (4.9 million residents) were collected. Anonymized records of pediatric (≤14 years) ED visits included patient characteristics, arrival mode, triage code, clinical presentation, and discharge mode. Year-on-year variation of the main ED visit characteristics, and descriptive trends throughout the study period have been examined.
resultsOverall, 425,875 ED presentations were collected, 279,481 in 2019, and 146,394 in 2020 (- 48%), with a peak (- 79%) in March-April (first pandemic wave), and a second peak (below - 60%) in November-December (second pandemic wave). Burn or trauma, and fever were the two most common clinical presentations. Visits for nonurgent conditions underwent the strongest reduction during both pandemic waves, while urgent conditions reduced less sharply. ED arrival by ambulance was more common in 2020 (4.5%) than 2019 (3.5%), with a higher proportion of red triage codes (0.5%, and 0.4% respectively), and hospitalizations following ED discharge (9.1%, and 5.9% respectively).
conclusionSince the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, pediatric ED presentations underwent a steeper reduction than that observed for adults. Lockdown and fear of contagion in hospital-based services likely deterred parents from seeking medical support for their children. Given COVID-19 could become endemic, it is imperative that public health experts guarantee unhindered access to medical support for urgent, and less urgent health conditions, while minimizing infectious disease risks, to prevent children from suffering direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic.
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