What are the common symptoms of pneumonia in children? 5 key points for nursing care of pneumonia in children

Pediatric pneumonia is a common clinical disease that is prone to occur in all seasons, but more often in winter and spring. If the treatment is not thorough, it is easy to recur and affect the child's development. The clinical manifestations of pediatric pneumonia are fever, cough, and dyspnea. There are also cases where there is no fever but severe cough and wheezing. The main cause of the disease is that children like to eat sweet, salty, fried and other foods, which causes food stagnation and internal heat, phlegm and heat, and occasional cold wind that makes the lung qi stagnate. The two are mutually causal and cause pneumonia.

What are the common symptoms of pneumonia in children

1. Mild bronchopneumonia.

1. Fever: Most cases are high.

2. Cough: It starts with frequent irritating dry coughs, followed by phlegm sounds in the throat. Coughing may be accompanied by vomiting and choking on milk.

3. Shallow and rapid breathing, nasal fanning, mild cyanosis around the mouth and nails in some children

In addition to respiratory symptoms, children may also have systemic symptoms such as mental depression, irritability, loss of appetite, shivering, diarrhea, etc.

2. Severe pneumonia: In addition to the aggravation of the symptoms of mild pneumonia, there is persistent high fever and severe symptoms of systemic poisoning, accompanied by damage to the functions of other organs.

1. Respiratory system symptoms: shallow, rapid breathing, up to 80 times per minute, flaring of the nostrils, three-depression sign, groaning during exhalation, obvious cyanosis of the face and extremities, and even pale or grayish complexion. Dense, fine, moist rales can be heard in both lungs.

2. Circulatory system symptoms: Pneumonia in infants is often accompanied by heart failure.

3. Neurological symptoms (1) Irritability, drowsiness, staring, squinting, and upward eye movement. (2) Drowsiness, even coma and convulsions. (3) Conjunctival edema. (4) Pupil changes, slow or absent response to light. (5) Irregular breathing rhythm. (6) Anterior fontanelle expansion, signs of meningeal irritation, and normal cerebrospinal fluid pressure except for increased cerebrospinal fluid pressure are called toxic encephalopathy. In severe cases, intracranial pressure is even higher and brain herniation may occur.

4. Digestive system symptoms: Children may experience decreased appetite, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal distension. In severe cases, the vomitus may be coffee-colored or there may be blood in the stool, bowel sounds may disappear, and they may suffer from toxic intestinal paralysis and toxic hepatitis.

5. Metabolic acidosis, respiratory acidosis, and mixed acidosis may occur.

5 key points for nursing care of children with pneumonia

1. Maintain a quiet and clean environment to ensure that the child has enough rest.

If there are always many elders and relatives around the sick child, it will be noisy and not conducive to the child's rest. At the same time, the carbon dioxide exhaled by people will accumulate inside, and the polluted air will be not conducive to the body's recovery. Therefore, there should not be too many people in the room, visitors should not stay too long, and the room should be ventilated regularly to ensure air circulation.

2. Pay attention to proper nutrition and drink enough water.

Children with pneumonia often have high fever, poor appetite, and are unwilling to eat, so the diet should be light and easy to digest, and at the same time ensure a certain amount of high-quality protein. For those with fever, give them a liquid diet (such as human milk, cow's milk, rice soup, egg drop soup, beef soup, vegetable soup, fruit juice, etc.), and add semi-liquid food (such as porridge, noodles, cakes, etc.) after the fever subsides. Because children with pneumonia evaporate more water than usual, they must be supplemented with an appropriate amount of sugar and salt water.

3. Strengthen skin and oral care.

Children who sweat a lot should change their damp clothes in time and wipe off the sweat with a hot towel, which is good for cooling the skin and resisting germs. Children with a lot of sputum should try to cough up the sputum to prevent the poor discharge of sputum from affecting the recovery of pneumonia. If the condition allows, parents should often pick up the child and pat his back gently. Children who are bedridden should turn over frequently, which can also make it easier to cough up sputum and help recovery.

4. Keep the airway open.

When children have pneumonia, the gas exchange in the alveoli is restricted, and there are varying degrees of hypoxia in the body. If the nasal cavity is blocked or there is a lot of sputum in the trachea and bronchi, it will affect the inhalation of air and aggravate the hypoxia. Therefore, parents should promptly clear the nasal secretions and suction the sputum for the children to keep the airway open. The room should maintain a certain humidity to avoid dry air, which is conducive to coughing up sputum.

5. Take medicine and get injections on time to avoid affecting the efficacy.

Because children have poor disease resistance, especially infants, their illness is prone to recurrence. When parents find that their children are breathing rapidly, having difficulty breathing, blue areas around their lips, pale or cyanotic faces, it means that the children are suffering from hypoxia and must be rescued as soon as possible.