As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves in Europe, safe transport of critically ill children challenged our retrieval team. In early July, recommendations for the transport of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients were published. Our study aimed to assess, retrospectively, if the recommendations were followed by our team. From the start of the current COVID-19 pandemic, our team developed transport procedures to protect health-care workers and to minimize nosocomial spread. The European Society of Pediatric Neonatal Intensive Care recommendations were made of a bunch of 17 elements. We extracted from our database all transports of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 from 1 st of March to 31th of May and compared for each transports the agreement with the 17 recommendations. Out of the 31 children that met the inclusion criteria, 29 were transported by our unit. Five recommendations were not applicable and therefore not discussed. Of the 12 recommendations remaining, 3 were not endorsed by our team: regarding the parental presence during retrieval, wearing a surgical mask for patient and the use of a dedicated pathway at arrival. ﻿Conclusion: Most of the European recommendations were fully endorsed by our local retrieval team, but we have to improve our attitude in some aspects.
Assessment of compliance between a local “patients transportation protocol” and the latest European Consensus Recommendations for pediatric and neonatal retrieval in a COVID-19 context