How to check diarrhea in children

Pediatric diarrhea is a common digestive tract disease in children, which is divided into two types: infectious and non-infectious. In fact, pediatric diarrhea is caused by infection with bacteria or viruses. The main incidence of pediatric diarrhea is infants under 2 years old, and those under 1 year old account for about 50%. The following mainly introduces what examinations should be done for children with diarrhea?

1. Routine stool examination, intestinal flora analysis, stool acidity, reducing sugar and bacterial culture.

2. Duodenal fluid examination: analyze the pH value, trypsin, chymotrypsin, enterokinase and serum trypsinogen to determine the protein digestion and absorption function, measure the lipase and bile salt concentrations in the duodenal fluid to understand the digestion and absorption of fat, and also perform bacterial culture and parasite egg detection.

3. Small intestinal mucosal biopsy is the most reliable method to understand the pathophysiological changes of chronic diarrhea. If necessary, protein, carbohydrate and fat absorption function tests, X-ray, colonoscopy and other examinations can also be performed for comprehensive analysis and judgment.

During diagnosis, pay attention to finding the cause and exclude diarrhea caused by infection outside the digestive tract. First, understand the feeding situation, history of unclean food, history of disease contact, and disinfection of food and tableware from the medical history to distinguish infectious from non-infectious diarrhea. Secondly, pay attention to the season and region of onset. Diarrhea in northern my country from March to July is mostly caused by Escherichia coli, while cases from August to December are mostly caused by viruses. If conditions permit, stool culture, electron microscopy or virus isolation should be performed.

In short, if your child has persistent diarrhea, especially if the symptoms are not relieved after taking antidiarrheal medicine for a period of time, you need to seek medical attention and conduct appropriate examinations in time to find out what exactly causes the diarrhea in children. Only after finding out the cause can you treat it accordingly and recover sooner.