Cough in Children: Pediatrician Tactics in Relation to Diagnosis and Treatment
Cough is among the common symptoms every pediatrician faces in his or her practice. Individual features observation helps physicians to determine the localization of the cough, and, sometimes, disease origin - the cause of the symptom. By duration a cough could be acute, chronic, or relapsed, by intensity it could be persistent, severe, or subtle, by character it could be dry (non-productive) or wet (productive). In most cases, thorough patient history analysis, patient examination, and sometimes laboratory and functional investigations are needed to verify a cause of the cough. Wet cough is specific to the initial stage of exudative inflammation in the bronchial tree, it is seen in upper and lower airway disease. Many clinical characteristics should be taken into account, when choosing symptomatic therapy, such as the production of the sputum, intensity, frequency, pain characteristic, duration of the cough, characteristic of the sputum, impact on child state, and patient age. A productive cough is an indication for mucoactive remedies, while a dry cough is an indication for cough-suppressants therapy.