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COVID-19 is now so widespread that it has triggered a need to update guidelines for care of non-COVID conditions in children who have been infected.
Here are two that you need to know about.
When Can Infected Student Athletes Return to Play?
Now that so many community members have caught and recovered from COVID-19, pediatricians are being faced with return-to-play (RTP) questions among high school competitive athletes. The American College of Cardiology's Sports and Exercise Cardiology Section has proposed new guidelines.
The document emphasizes that, like many COVID-19 recommendations, these are certainly subject to change as more data become available. In fact, that is what this guidance represents — a second iteration of recommendations issued in the spring by some of the same authors who outlined a risk-stratified approach to testing and RTP.
There's a lot of excellent detail in the report, but I'll focus on some of the everyday useful take-home points:
Cardiac testing. Tests that may be considered for athletes who experience COVID-19 include ECG, echocardiograms, high-sensitivity testing for troponin I levels, and cardiac MRI.
Some take-home points from the document:
For children less than 15 years old who are asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic with COVID-19, no cardiovascular testing is recommended unless the child had specific cardiac symptoms during their illness.
