Respiratory Manifestations of COVID-19 in Children: A Narrative Review

Background: coronavirus disease 2019 (covid‐19, the seventh coronavirus) is a new infectiousdisease that spread worldwide and rapidly became a pandemic. covid‐19 is rare in children andoften asymptomatic. the respiratory system is mainly involved in covid-19 infection.objectives: this study aimed to review respiratory manifestations in children with covid-19.methods: we searched for studies published from january 2020 to january 2021 in pubmed,google scholar, and scopus in english. the search words were “2019-ncov,” “novel coronavirus,”“covid-19,” “sars-cov-2,” “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2,” “children,”“child,” “infant,” “teenager,” “adolescent,” “pediatric,” and “neonate.”results: cough was a common symptom in our study (18.8%-100%, mean=64%). pneumoniaprevalence in children with covid-19 is 11%-67% (mean=46%). mild respiratory symptoms(14% - 60%) and severe respiratory distress syndromes (14%) were reported in some studies.upper respiratory tract infection (urti) was reported in 4 studies ranging from 11.1% to34.4% (mean=24.1%). ground-glass opacities (ggo) was reported in 12.2% to 81% of cases(mean=49.01%). isolated consolidations were reported in 17% and 58% of patients in twostudies. enhanced lung texture was reported in 1.3% to 50% (mean=20.07%) of patients.bilateral patchy shadowing was seen in 12.3% to 68% (mean=46.58%) of patients.conclusions: cough is the most common manifestation of respiratory system involvement inchildren with covid-19. ggo and bilateral patchy involvement are the most common findingon lung ct scans in children with covid-19.