The alert is taken seriously. An unexpected number of children have been hospitalized in the Parisian intensive care units for acute myocarditis (inflammation of the myocardium, main muscle of the heart) and atypical forms of Kawasaki syndrome (inflammatory disease of vasculitis type) for a fortnight.
An alert was first sent to health authorities by the five pediatric resuscitation services in Ile-de-France, Monday, April 27. Then learned societies, including the French Society of Pediatrics, the French-speaking Society of Rheumatology and Pediatric Internal Medicine, the French-speaking Group of Pediatric Resuscitation and Emergencies (GFRUP)… also sent an alert to healthcare professionals on Wednesday April 29.
Since April 15, “We are seeing a noticeable increase in cases of children with acute myocarditis”, explain the resuscitators from Ile-de-France. These alerts come after those of the British Pediatric Critical Care Society on Monday April 27 and by NHS officials (National Health Service, the British health system), relayed by the specialized newspaper Health Service Journal. Hospital officials say they are concerned “By the appearance in children of these syndromes, which could be linked to Covid-19”.
British and French doctors have approached their Italian counterparts, who have observed similar syndromes in Bergamo, as in Spain or Switzerland.
A rare disease
While, since the beginning of the epidemic, the number of severe cases of Covid in children and adolescents is very low, around twenty children, mainly aged 8 to 15 years, are affected by these symptoms in Ile -from France, report the resuscitating pediatricians we interviewed. “More than a dozen patients aged 5 to 12 are hospitalized at Necker Hospital [AP-HP], without any comorbidity. We can’t talk about an influx, but we have a large number of patients who have the same symptoms ”, explains Professor Mehdi Oualha, pediatric resuscitator at Necker. Similarly, four children under the age of 10 are or have been hospitalized in intensive care units in Robert-Debré (AP-HP), three in Trousseau (AP-HP), 5 or 6 in Bicêtre (AP-HP). None have a priori comorbidity. A few cases have been reported elsewhere in France.
These children suffered from abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting, in general, then fever, sometimes heart inflammation, and a strong inflammatory syndrome with more rarely rashes. “The clinical picture sometimes resembles Kawasaki syndrome, a childhood inflammatory disease whose symptoms are polymorphic, particularly in the heart”, explains Professor Pierre-Louis Léger, head of the pediatric resuscitation service at Trousseau Hospital. But this rare disease often occurs before the age of 2 and most of the time before 6 and affects a small number of children.
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