INTRODUCTION
COVID-19, which emerged first in China and has caused a global pandemic,
causes milder clinical symptoms in children than in adults, while very
few cases result in mortality1,2,3. The clinical
picture of COVID-19 varies in a broad range from asymptomatic disease to
multisystem dysfunction. The most frequently seen symptoms are fever,
cough, nasal symptoms, diarrhea, nausea/vomiting, fatigue and
respiratory distress3,4. The standard diagnostic tool
for COVID-19 is the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
method5. Nevertheless, studies have reported that
false-negative PCR results may be encountered due to various
causes6,7. In particular, in patients who have
clinical and epidemiological characteristics compatible with COVID-19
and negative RT-PCR test results, CT is also widely utilized for the
early diagnosis of COVID-19 8,9.
Although prognostic factors in COVID-19 patients have not been
sufficiently explained, the relationship between lung parenchyma
involvement and poor prognosis is known well10. It was
previously shown that pulmonary artery (PA) expansion in CT scans was
associated with pulmonary hypertension (PH)11. PH,
which develops as a result of inflammation forming in the lungs, hypoxia
and increased pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR), causes right
ventricular (RV) deficiency, as well as early mortality in the case of
unresponsiveness to treatment12. Therefore, changes
occurring in the diameter of PA may provide new data in shedding light
on COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality. While there are a limited
number of studies investigating the relationship between PA diameters
and COVID-19 in adults, the literature review that was conducted in our
study did not reveal any study that examined this issue in children. In
this study, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between
COVID-19 and PA diameters in pediatric patients.