SPLaT_ER: An EHR review of long COVID coding in CYP V 1.0

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    SPLaT_ER - Symptom patterns and life with post-acute COVID-19 in children and young people: An Electronic healthcare Records review of long-COVID coding in primary care compared with long-COVID identified by questionnaire

  • IRAS ID

    331659

  • Contact name

    Glenys Gillian Somayajula

  • Contact email

    g.g.somayajula@keele.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    Keele University

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 5 months, 13 days

  • Research summary

    Why are we doing this study?

    We know that long COVID (symptoms after COVID-19 that continue for more than four weeks) is common in adults but less is known about this in children. We also know that many more people report having long COVID than is recorded in their general practice health records. We suspect that this is also true for children, but we don’t know this.

    What are we going to do?

    There is already an existing study called SPLaT-19_C, recruiting through West Midland GP practices, which asked children aged 8-17 years old (or their parents/ carers) if they had COVID-19 and whether they had any long-lasting symptoms.

    This new study will ask these children (or their parents/ carers) for permission to link this existing study with children’s general practice (GP) electronic health records to see if COVID-19 and long COVID are being recorded in children’s general practice records and to compare this to the information we have from the answers from questionnaires in the existing study. We are planning to take 6 months to run this study and then around two to three months afterwards to write up our findings and tell people about them.

    How will this help?

    It is important to know how well medical records agree with what patients tell us has happened, as anonymised medical records are often used in research to describe how many people are affected by medical conditions and to what extent. We need to know how well GP medical records agree with what children and young people have told us in the questionnaire about symptoms following COVID-19. This will help us understand about long COVID in children's GP records and design better services to support children with long COVID.

  • REC name

    South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    24/SC/0026

  • Date of REC Opinion

    30 Jan 2024

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion