The pandemic caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected all age groups, including the pediatric population, in 3–5% of all cases. We performed a meta-analysis to understand the survival and associated complications in pediatric cancer patients as well as their hospitalization, intensive care, and ventilation care (supplemental oxygen/endotracheal intubation) needs.
A systematic search was performed using MEDLINE, TRIP Database, International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO), The Cochrane Library, Wiley, LILACS, and Google Scholar. Additionally, a search using the snowball method was performed in
The overall survival was 99.4%. There were no statistically significant differences in the risk of hospitalization between hematological malignancies and solid tumors (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.48–18.3; OR = 2.94). The risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit was also not different between hematological malignancies and other tumors (95% CI 0.35–5.81; OR = 1.42). No differences were found for the need of ventilatory support (95% CI 0.14–3.35; OR = 0.68). Although all the studies were cross-sectional, the mortality of these patients was 0.6% at the time of analysis.
In the analyzed literature, survival in the studied group of patients with COVID-19 was very high. Suffering from hematological neoplasia or other solid tumors and COVID-19 was not a risk factor in children with cancer for the analyzed outcomes.