Rotavirus is a leading cause of acute diarrhea in children worldwide. Costa Rica recently started universal rotavirus vaccinations for infants with a two-dose schedule in February 2019. We aimed to study the seasonality of rotavirus during the pre-vaccination era. We retrospectively studied a six-year period of hospital admissions due to rotavirus gastroenteritis. We estimated seasonal peak timing and relative intensities using trend-adjusted negative binomial regression models with the δ-method. We assessed the relationship between rotavirus cases and weather characteristics and estimated their effects for the current month, one-month prior and two months prior, by using Pearson correlation coefficients. A total of 798 cases were analyzed. Rotavirus cases predominated in the first five months of the year. On average, the peak of admissions occurred between late-February and early-March. During the seasonal peaks, the monthly count tended to increase 2.5–2.75 times above the seasonal nadir. We found the strongest negative association of monthly hospitalizations and joint percentiles of precipitation and minimal temperature at a lag of two months (R = −0.265, p = 0.027) and we detected correlations of −0.218, −0.223, and −0.226 (p < 0.05 for all three estimates) between monthly cases and the percentile of precipitation at lags 0, 1, and 2 months. In the warm tropical climate of Costa Rica, the increase in rotavirus hospitalizations coincided with dry and cold weather conditions with a two-month lag. The findings serve as the base for predictive modeling and estimation of the impact of a nation-wide vaccination campaign on pediatric rotaviral infection morbidity.

La ingestión de cuerpos extraños ocurre con frecuencia en niños y puede provocar complicaciones graves. En este artículo se presenta el caso de una niña de 2 años que ingirió un cuerpo extraño (CE) que se alojó en esófago y desarrolló una lesión intraluminal con aspecto de masa. Se presentó con dolor torácico. Los estudios realizados no revelaron el cuerpo extraño. Fue intervenida quirúrgicamente con resección de la masa y anastomosis secundaria. Patología reportó un CE de 2 cm largo, plano, redondo, plástico e inerte, con importante reacción inflamatoria.