Medicine, thanks to the accumulated experience, today can solve many problems. To correctly diagnose, you need a pediatric medical history. As an independent, the profession of a pediatrician is relatively young. But if you pick up literature and study ancient records, you can find manuscripts of Ancient India, Egypt, Babylon, China and the state of Urartu about feeding babies, proper care for them and treatment of childhood diseases. Already in the 15-16 centuries, books were written where you can see descriptions of childhood diseases, but they still lack recommendations. From the beginning of the 17th century, pediatrics began to stand out as a separate science. And already in the 18th century specialized educational literature was circulated. High child mortality has affected the development of pediatrics. Soon specialized hospitals began to open. The entire history of the disease in pediatrics today is not limited to even a hundred diseases.
Pediatrics and childhood diseases
Pediatrics is a separate field of medicine that studies the characteristics of the development of children, their diseases, and the issues of caring for a newborn, healthy and sick child. Initially, the subject of pediatrics was only childhood diseases of young children and the fight against their elimination. Today, this science combines a variety of aspects that are closely related to the normal development and diseases of children from birth to puberty. Such areas contain hygiene, physiology, dietetics, childhood diseases, their prevention and treatment.
The child’s body grows and develops all the time, has a number of anatomical and physiological characteristics, emotional and physical immaturity, thereby determining the specific course of the disease. For example, certain childhood diseases go much easier until they grow up, such as rubella and chickenpox, but diseases of the upper respiratory tract are difficult for babies.
Pyelonephritis in children
The diagnosis of pyelonephritis implies non-specific infectious and inflammatory damage to the pelvis and tubules of the nephron of the interstitial tissue of the kidneys. In childhood, this is a very common kidney disease. According to WHO, this diagnosis is immediately after acute respiratory infections, which is in first place. More often girls suffer from him than boys.
Features of pyelonephritis
Renal disease is also described by pediatrics. The history of the disease pyelonephritis suggests that the cause of the appearance of such a disease is an infection. Today, acute pyelonephritis and its various purulent forms are found. This manifestation with temperature and pain can develop with scarlet fever, bronchitis, flu, septicopyemia, chronic tonsillitis, typhoid fever, etc. Most often, pathogens are different types of Escherichia coli. Streptococci, staphylococci, enterococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella, gonococci, Proteus, mycoplasia, Candida type fungi, viruses, etc., affect the development of such a disease.
Children's gastroduodenitis
This disease in children involves non-specific inflammation of the mucous membranes of the stomach and duodenum. Chronic and acute gastroduodenitis occurs. The history of the disease and its diagnosis of pediatrics are not always accurate, since this disease can be confused with gastritis. They have similar symptoms. The acute manifestation looks like this: pain and heaviness in the upper abdomen, dry mouth and thirst, sour belching, headaches and nausea. Chronic gastroduodenitis combines many more symptoms:
- after eating, aching in the form of attacks of abdominal pain;
- pain in the abdomen with pressure;
- a feeling of fullness of the stomach;
- belching;
- heartburn;
- nausea or vomiting;
- lack of appetite;
- plaque in the language of white or yellow;
- loss of body weight;
- bad sleep;
- fatigue;
- dizziness;
- attacks of constipation and diarrhea.
Children's illness gastroduodenitis is slightly different from an adult. The pediatric medical history is often similar. Medicine has found ways to combat this diagnosis, but its treatment is time-consuming.
Bronchitis
Bronchitis is a common upper respiratory tract infection in our life caused by a mixed viral-bacterial infection. Most often, it is the result of an untreated common cold. For the most part, they suffer from children with poor appetite and nutrition, rickets, lack of vitamins or a weak physical constitution, with poor immunity.
Modern pediatrics, the history of the disease, bronchitis tells us that the main symptoms of such a disease include:
- runny nose;
- sneezing;
- cough;
- fever in the initial stage of the disease.
Typically, a cough is convulsive without either sputum, which is expectorated with a foamy, whitish or viscous consistency. Untreated bronchitis can develop into chronic or sometimes even asthmatic.
Acute bronchitis in children
The children's body is more susceptible to the possibility of developing various kinds of diseases, in particular - various forms of bronchitis. This is due to anatomical and physiological features, such as:
1. Defectively formed immunity, weak resistance of the body to microbes.
2. Features in the anatomical structure of the bronchial tree in children, which do not allow normal expectoration of sputum.
3. Mucociliary clearance is not perfect. As a consequence of this feature, there is a tendency to increased accumulation of sputum due to the fact that the cilia located on the cylindrical epithelium of the mucosa cannot remove it.
Features of the course of bronchitis in children
As a rule, in childhood, bronchitis is long and much harder than in adults. For very young children, such a disease is even more dangerous. This is due to its frequent transition to the obstructive form or a long, recurring manifestation until the age of 3-5 years, until the moment when significant changes in the anatomical features of the bronchi and the immune system as a whole occur. For a doctor to make such a diagnosis, the medical history of acute bronchitis must be known. Pediatrics has found a way to deal with this ailment.
The features of this disease in children include the fact that initially not only coughing, but also signs of intoxication are manifested. During this period, the child is sluggish, he has a high fever, weakness appears, and lack of appetite. In very severe manifestations, with the participation of bronchial obstruction, shortness of breath with heavy breathing and wheezing, bubbling rales is formed. Older children are very rarely confronted with this manifestation of the disease.
Pneumonia
Inflammation of the lungs in both children and adults is a process that occurs in the tissues of the lung, which develops either as a separate independent disease, or is a complication after other pathologies, such as measles, flu, whooping cough, etc. This disease has another name. - pneumonia.
As the medical history of pediatrics shows, pneumonia is considered a fairly common disease. Thanks to modern techniques, modern scientists have found out the cause of acute pneumonia - it is the interaction of several types of viruses and microorganisms at once. Those who have unfavorable living conditions, poor nutrition, hypotrophy, rickets, exudative diathesis, vitamin deficiency and more are at greater risk of getting this disease. Most often in pediatrics, such a diagnosis is noted in many cases as a consequence of influenza infection, catarrh of the respiratory tract, because the number of patients with pneumonia increases markedly during the cold season. Colds and hypothermia create suitable conditions for increasing the number of harmful pathogens. Most often, the carrier of such infections is a patient with the flu or ARI.
In most cases, the incubation period of pneumonia lasts 2-7 days, all this time in the upper respiratory tract, microorganisms multiply. Usually, the first sign of a dangerous pathology is the symptoms characteristic of a mild cold: a runny nose, a not too high body temperature, mild cough, redness of the eyes and throat. After two days, such manifestations of the disease can pass or become less pronounced, in some cases, acute pneumonia in children develops without precursors.
The course of pneumonia in children
The severe course of pneumonia is caused by the structural features of the respiratory system. In a small child, the nasopharyngeal space is not sufficiently developed, its small size and the small diameter of the holes in the nose make it impossible to completely warm and filter out the air that enters the lungs during breathing. As the history of the disease shows, acute bronchitis in pediatrics is very difficult, since the narrow lumen of the trachea and larynx, the delicate mucous membrane, which has many lymphatic vessels, in which the blood supply works, is also very difficult for the appearance and development of pathology. In addition, the lungs of children are composed of a looser structure, have more blood and are considered less airy. In a newborn, the chest is cylindrical, since the ribs are slightly more horizontal than in adults. Such a physiological peculiarity does not allow the infant to breathe deeply, because his breathing remains superficial for some period of time.
Prevention of childhood infectious diseases
Modern pediatrics for children on this issue gives a lot of advice, but there are basic recommendations. Since all
infectious diseases appear due to the ingestion of pathogenic organisms into the human body and their reproduction already in the organs, in order to avoid infections and consequences, it is necessary to identify and isolate the source of infection, exclude the mechanisms of transmission of infection, and do everything possible to increase the child’s immunity.