Incidence and Risk of Pulmonary Embolism in Pediatric Patients with Acute Covid-19 Infection

INTRODUCTION: Previous studies have reported an increased risk of procoagulant events such as pulmonary embolism (PE) in adult patients with Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19). However, scant information exists within pediatric samples. This study aimed to investigate the effect of COVID-19 acute infections on the incidence of PE among pediatric patients. METHOD(S): Using Virtual Pediatric Systems (VPS), retrospective data was collected of patients age < 18 years old who were admitted to participating pediatric critical care units from 2018-2021. Patients with an ICD diagnosis of COVID-19 infection or PE were extracted for further analysis. Additional information regarding patient age, gender, race, BMI, comorbidities were also obtained. RESULT(S): In total, there were 488,298 admissions to PICUS participating in VPS from 2018 - 2021. In 2018 and 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence of PE among the pediatric population was 2.29 per 1000 patients (n=614). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, the incidence of PE increased to 3.11 per 1000 patients (n=686). Of the PE cases between 2020 to 2021, 12.1% (n=83) patients had an acute COVID-19 infection (53.0% female;42.0% BMI> 35;91.6% >12 years of age;92.8% survival). Patients with acute COVID-19 infection had 3.4 (95% CI, 2.7 - 4.2) times the risk of pulmonary embolism than patients from 2020 to 2021 without acute COVID-19 infection. CONCLUSION(S): In this study, we report an increased incidence of PE among pediatric patients during the COVID-19 pandemic when compared with the years prior to the pandemic. Additionally, we report a significantly increased relative risk of pulmonary embolism in patients with acute COVID-19 infection compared to patients without acute COVID-19 infection. Further analysis is planned to adjust for hypercoagulable states. Additional research is needed to identify risk factors for PE in pediatric patients with COVID-19.

Social media in health promotion in the context of contact restriction in the Covid-19 pandemic

The objective is to analyze the contributions of social media, in the format of lives, in health promotion in the context of physical distancing in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This is an observational and bibliographic study of an exploratory analytical nature with a narrative approach, using data from streaming platforms and Google Trends from January to April 2020. Search for lives had a notable rise, especially between May and April, and these contribute for health promotion, mental health care, leisure, education, social relationships, entertainment, and emotional support as they articulate and permeate public policies associated with technologies. In addition, there is ample relevance regarding the social role they assume in encouraging donations. It is believed that these analyzes and information tend to cooperate with further investigations to better understand the contributions of digital technologies during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for people who have and/or are experiencing such experiences.