Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, LKH Hochsteiermark, Leoben, Austria.
Acta Paediatr. 2021 Jun;110(6):1778-1783. doi: 10.1111/apa.15784. Epub 2021 Feb 21.
Face masks are essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization, recommend that they are used for children aged six years and older. However, parents are increasingly expressing concerns about whether these might be physically harmful. This mini review assessed the evidence.
We conducted a narrative review on the effects of mask wearing on physiological variables in children, using PubMed, the Cochrane Library and the World Health Organization COVID-19 Database up to 7 November 2020. The lack of paediatric studies prompted a second search for adult studies.
We only found two paediatric studies, published in 2019 and 2020. The 2020 study was not related to COVID-19. Only one study, performed with N95 respirators, collected medical parameters, and this did not suggest any harmful effects of gas exchange. The eight adult studies, including four prompted by the pandemic and one on surgeons, reported that face masks commonly used during the pandemic did not impair gas exchange during rest or mild exercise.
International guidelines recommend face masks for children aged six years and older, but further studies are needed to provide evidence-based recommendations for different age groups.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，口罩是必不可少的，联合国儿童基金会和世界卫生组织建议 6 岁及以上儿童使用。然而，家长们越来越担心口罩是否会对儿童身体造成伤害。本迷你综述评估了相关证据。
我们使用 PubMed、Cochrane 图书馆和世界卫生组织 COVID-19 数据库，对截至 2020 年 11 月 7 日儿童戴口罩对生理变量影响的研究进行了叙述性综述。由于缺乏儿科研究，我们又对成人研究进行了第二次搜索。
我们仅找到了两篇发表于 2019 年和 2020 年的儿科研究。2020 年的研究与 COVID-19 无关。仅有一项使用 N95 呼吸器的研究收集了医学参数，但这并没有表明气体交换有任何有害影响。8 项成人研究，包括 4 项由大流行引发的研究和 1 项针对外科医生的研究报告称，大流行期间常用的口罩在休息或轻度运动时不会影响气体交换。
国际指南建议 6 岁及以上儿童使用口罩，但需要进一步研究为不同年龄组提供基于证据的建议。
