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February 2013 Moms
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Interesting study: When To Really Worry? How Long Kids’ Coughs and Colds Tend To Last

elliespiralelliespiral member
in February 2013 Moms
I found the data in this article to be really interesting as we're mired in the middle of cold and flu season:


"Your baby’s cold is lasting 10 days. Your toddler’s earache persists all weekend. Your teenager’s cough lingers for weeks. When should you worry? That is to say, when should you really worry, going a step beyond generalized parental anxiety to actual, galvanizing concern? How long is too long?

A paper recently out in the BMJ offers some welcome answers to that eternal question, and we’ve converted them into the simple bar chart above. The lead author of the paper, Dr. Matthew Thompson, professor of family medicine at the University of Washington and researcher at Oxford, says he’d be happy to see it posted on many a fridge.

With one important proviso, however: Just because the duration of a child’s illness is within the expected range, that’s no reason to ignore other causes for concern. “If you’re still worried, if your child is getting sicker and sicker, and there’s something else going wrong — they’re not feeding well, having difficulty breathing, extremely high fever — you do need to take those things seriously,” Dr. Thompson said. “As parents, as doctors, we’re not just interested in duration of illness, we’re also interested in how severe the symptoms are.”"

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Re: Interesting study: When To Really Worry? How Long Kids’ Coughs and Colds Tend To Last

  • wifeofadamwifeofadam member
    This is great information!  Thanks!

    People definitely overreact and overprescribe medication for children.  And sometimes I think the medications actually prolong things because they suppress the symptoms, like fever, that help the body rid itself of the sickness.

    Our family doc comments at every well child visit about how my kids never get sick because she only sees them around their birthdays.  I always tell her that just because she doesn't see them, it doesn't mean they are never sick.  It just takes a whole lot to get us worried and warrant a trip to the doctor, I guess.
        
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  • light52light52 member
    It takes a whole lot to get us to the doc too so our ped took us seriously when I took the baby in 5 times in 6 weeks last fall.  He had only seen my other two for illnesses twice in the past 3 years.  Each time there was reason for us to be there and I'm glad I trusted my gut to take him.  I usually let things ride their course but I have friends who take their kids the second a fever appears.  I've never understood the reasoning behind that.
    Samuel  2.26.06 41w ASD/ADHD
    Eli  6.18.09 35.5w
    Silas  1.25.13 35.4w 10 days NICU, allergies/asthma, gluten intolerant

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  • tamarar5tamarar5 member
    It's the same way with my kids and dr. She knows there's something wrong because we rarely go in. Which is why I was so frustrated when I took DD in after she had been throwing up and had diarrhea for five days. We didn't see our regular dr and the other one basically blew me if with "it's just a virus."

    I get that she had a virus and there was nothing they could do, BUT dd hasn't been able to keep anything down and by the time I took her in, she hasn't gone to the bathroom at all in two days. I was very worried about dehydration and the dr blew me off.
                    We're Going to be a Family of 5!

    Lilypie - (PaHE) Lilypie - (4noI)

                                   Lilypie - (2q9u)


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