Abstract
Background: The severity of lung involvement associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection levels from lack of symptoms or slight pneumonia (in 81%) to excessive disease-associated hypoxia (seen in 14%), a critical disease associated with shock, respiration failure, and multi-organ failure (in 5%) or death (2.3%). Aim: This work aims to determine the prevalence of clinical and radiological manifestations among children and adolescents COVID-19 patients. Materials and Methods: A systematic search was performed over different medical databases to identify Pediatrics studies, which studied the outcome of COVID-19 infection in children and adolescents. Using the meta-analysis process, either with fixed or random-effects models, we conducted a meta-analysis on the prevalence of clinical manifestations (e.g., fever, nasal congestion, cough, dyspnea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and critical cases), as primary outcomes, and on radiological manifestations (e.g., CT involvement - ground-glass opacities), as a secondary outcome. Pooled prevalence of abdominal pain=9.6%, pooled prevalence of critical cases=7.7%. Results: Eight studies were identified involving 682 patients. The meta-analysis process revealed a pooled prevalence of fever=61.1%, a pooled prevalence of nasal congestion=8%, pooled prevalence of cough=49.7%, pooled prevalence of dyspnea=21.4%, pooled prevalence of diarrhea=13.3%, pooled prevalence of critical cases=7.7%. Concerning the secondary outcome measures, the pooled prevalence of CT involvement=41.6%. Conclusion: To conclude, COVID-19 disease cause different manifestations in children such as fever and respiratory symptoms such as cough and dyspnea, organizing pneumonia and decreased pulmonary function.