Respiratory adverse events in adults with COVID-19 undergoing general anaesthesia can be life-threatening. However, there remains a knowledge gap about respiratory adverse events in children with COVID-19. We created an international observational registry to collect airway management outcomes in children with COVID-19 who were having a general anaesthetic. We hypothesised that children with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 would experience more hypoxaemia and complications than those without. Between 3 April 2020 and 1 November 2020, 78 international centres participated. In phase 1, centres collected outcomes on all children (age ≤ 18 y) having a general anaesthetic for 2 consecutive weeks. In phase 2, centres recorded outcomes for children with test-confirmed or suspected COVID-19 (based on symptoms) having a general anaesthetic. We did not study children whose tracheas were already intubated. The primary outcome was the incidence of hypoxaemia during airway management. Secondary outcomes included: incidence of other complications; and first-pass success rate for tracheal intubation. In total, 7896 children were analysed (7567 COVID-19 negative and 329 confirmed or presumed COVID-19 positive). The incidence of hypoxaemia during airway management was greater in children who were COVID-19 positive (24 out of 329 (7%) vs. 214 out of 7567 (3%); OR 2.70 (95%CI 1.70-4.10)). Children who had symptoms of COVID-19 had a higher incidence of hypoxaemia compared with those who were asymptomatic (9 out of 51 (19%) vs. 14 out of 258 (5%), respectively; OR 3.7 (95%CI 1.5-9.1)). Children with confirmed or presumed COVID-19 have an increased risk of hypoxaemia during airway management in conjunction with general anaesthesia.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 13. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 May 2022.
All research outputs
#3,019,046
of 28,695,121 outputs
Outputs from Anaesthesia
#1,733
of 5,905 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#62,932
of 457,445 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Anaesthesia
#45
of 89 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,695,121 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,905 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 457,445 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 89 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 49th percentile – i.e., 49% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
