Principles of examination for diarrhea in children

My child has been suffering from diarrhea recently. What should I do? Many parents and friends will have such questions. Is the child's diarrhea just pediatric diarrhea? What kind of examination should be done when taking the child to the hospital? Many careful parents and friends will understand the specific examination of pediatric diarrhea to avoid going to the hospital without knowing anything and blindly listening to the doctor's instructions and only doing the examination. In fact, there are several types of examinations for pediatric diarrhea:

1. Stool test

Stool examination is very important for diarrhea and other examinations cannot completely replace it.

Bacterial culture: Some children have diarrhea for a long time, or have repeated diarrhea, or have repeated bloody stools. If there is no improvement after treatment, a bacterial culture of the stool is needed to find out if there is any special bacterial infection.

2. Routine blood test

The total number of white blood cells is mostly normal, a few are slightly increased, and lymphocytes may be increased in cell classification. Stool examination: The appearance is yellow watery stool, without mucus, pus or blood, and there is no abnormality in microscopic examination.

1) It is used for children with normal stool examination but fever. In this case, a routine blood test is performed to observe whether the white blood cell count is elevated or decreased, or some viscosity indicators are checked to provide the doctor with a basis for diagnosis.

2) Some children may need to have blood drawn for tests to check blood potassium, sodium, and chloride ions to reflect the situation and degree of water loss in the body, and fluid replacement should be carried out based on these conditions.

3) Children may also have blood drawn to check the status of heart, liver, and kidney enzymes to help doctors determine whether there is damage to other organs. The earlier the disease is discovered, the better the child's recovery.

3. Serum antibody test for rotavirus

EIA and other immunological methods are used to detect specific antibodies in the patient's serum. If the antibody titer of the double serum samples from the acute phase and the recovery phase increases by 4 times, it has diagnostic significance.

4. Other examinations

1) Some children have severe diarrhea or prolonged diarrhea, poor treatment response, or blood in the stool or malnutrition. Further examinations are needed, such as genetic metabolic disease screening, B-ultrasound or endoscopic examination (such as colonoscopy).

2) Children with convulsions also need to undergo some neurological examinations to determine whether there are intracranial problems. Or they may need to undergo a head CT scan to determine whether there is intracranial bleeding (some infants and young children with intracranial hemorrhage or intracranial tumors may experience diarrhea). When convulsions occur or the mental state is particularly bad, a lumbar puncture is also required to determine whether there is a neurological infection.

After understanding these, parents will have a direction when taking their children for examinations. After reading this, will parents feel more confident? I think the answer is yes. After reading this, you will not doubt the point of so many examinations in the hospital. This way, you can better cooperate with the doctor to treat your child and promote the child's recovery as soon as possible.