ArticleFrontiers in pediatrics2026
Impact of COVID-19 on the severity and length of stay among hospitalized pediatric patients.
Article in Frontiers in pediatrics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Pediatric hospital admissions and emergency department visits decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary objective of this study was to determine if pediatric patients hospitalized during the pandemic were more severely ill compared with those during the pre-pandemic period by measuring severity of illness, intensive care unit admissions, and length of stay. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted of patients admitted to an urban, large children's hospital in the Mid-Southern US from 2016 to 2021. A total of 58,369 admissions were included, with 42,877 pre-pandemic and 15,492 pandemic admissions. Results: During the pandemic, admissions of more severe illnesses increased significantly compared with pre-pandemic admissions. Intensive care unit admission rates increased during the pandemic (11%) compared with pre-pandemic levels (9.9%). Length of stay did not differ. Conclusion: The severity of illness for hospitalized pediatric patients increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase may stem from unmet medical needs; patients must still receive routine, acute, and chronic care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.