Our aim was to investigate all children admitted to paediatric intensive care units (ICU) in the Republic of Ireland between January 2020 and August 2022 with an admitting diagnosis of acute COVID-19 infection or paediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome, temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS-TS) or associated illness. The patients were identified to catalogue the severity of illness, analyse cardiovascular manifestations of their disease, and short-term outcomes.

This is a retrospective multi-centre observational study.

127 children were admitted to paediatric ICU in Ireland with a COVID-19- related illness between January 2020 and August 2022. 87 (68.5%) of patients had acute COVID-19 infection, 39 (30.7%) had PIMS-TS and 1 (0.8%) patient had post-COVID vaccine-related myocarditis. Ventilatory support was required for 47/87 (54%) in the COVID-19 group comparative to 9/39 (23%) of patients with PIMS-TS. Inotropic support was required for 13/87 (14.9%) children with COVID-19 and 29/39 (74.3%) with PIMS-TS. Evidence of any cardiac disease on ECHO was identified in 23/38 (60.5%) of the PIMS-TS cohort comparative to only 5/36 (13.9%) of patients with COVID-19. 38/39 (97.4%) of patients with PIMS-TS-related cardiac disease and 100% with COVID-19 had a normal echo at the time of discharge from hospital. Overall survival of patients was 100%.

The burden of cardiac disease in children requiring paediatric ICU care for COVID-19-related disease was high in the acute phase; however, all children survived, and all cardiac investigations had normalised by short-term follow-up.