ABSTRACT
Background and Aim: Chest pain is a one of the most common com-plaints in children admitted to the Hospitals. Although it was among the most common reasons for referral to the pediatric car-diologist before COVID-19 era, this tendency is changed during covid pandemic. The primary objective of this study was to inves-tigate the aetiological causes, clinical characteristics and the follow up symptoms in terms of changing habits of parents and children admitted to the ED for acute chest pain during pandemic. Method(s): We reviewed the medical records of children under the age of 18 who presented with chest pain as the chief complaint from 1 January 2020 to 1 April 2021, at Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa Pediatric Emergency Clinic retrospectively from the hospital data-base. The study population comprised 128 boys and 119 girls. Result(s): All the children underwent ECG examination. While the ECG results of 239 children were normal, 6 sinus tachycardia, 1 supra-ventricular tachycardia and 1 incomplete left bundle branch block were observed. 33 patients had an echocardiography. Eight patients with an abnormal Echo result already had been examined and diag-nosed prior to their emergency admission. Blood samples were taken from 48 children for troponin. 17 samples wereabove the cut-off value which was set to 0.004 g/dl A total of 32 SARS-Cov2 swab samples were taken from suspicious cases and analyzed with RT-PCR. Consequently, 8 of these children were Covid-19 positive. 7 patients had no history of chronic disease, while 1 patient had ALL. All of these patients had mild symptoms and none of them required hospitali-zation. The total number of children who were referred to a pediatric cardiologist for a further examination together with the follow-up patients of the pediatric cardiology department is 52 Conclusion(s): In conclusion, Chest pain is a common referral com-plaint in children and is rarely due to cardiac diseases. To date car-diac reasons of chest pain was the major concern of patients and families attending the ED. However we found that Patient/family concerns regarding 'vulnerability to the severe covid infection has emerged as an important discourse during the pandemic on attend-ences to ED because of chest pain.