bjb@drutx.UUCP (BarnesBJ) (12/03/85)
This past weekend my eight month old daughter was taken to the emergency room for breathing difficulties. (diagnosed as croup) The doctor gave her an injection of decadron and a prescription of 6 doses of 2 tsp. each to be given in 6 hour intervals. Can anyone tell me more about croup? How serious can this be? Does it usually re-occur? I have to admit when the doctor told me to check her breathing hourly during the night it scared the hell out of me.
christensen@apollo.uucp (Wendy Christensen) (12/04/85)
(BarnesBJ @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver) writes: > Can anyone tell me more about croup? How serious can this be? > Does it usually re-occur? > I have to admit when the doctor told me to check her breathing > hourly during the night it scared the hell out of me. Every child in my family (all ten of us) had bouts of croup before we were two years old. Yes, it is very serious: the baby stops breathing. In my case, my mother woke up for no reason in the middle of the night and felt compelled to go check on me (which she normally didn't do). I wasn't breathing. (My dad later claimed his car didn't touch the ground all the way to the hospital. My mother, to her dying day, regarded my survival as a true miracle.) In those days, an oxygen tent was the immediate treatment. I was so sick that the doctor had to take an oxygen tent away from a child in an iron lung so that I could be put in the tent. Similar things happened to each person in my family. I don't recall anyone having more than one or two bouts, however. Once treated, each child was fine within a day or two. There seems to have been no permanent or long-term damage or effects of any kind in any of us. Once the child gets beyond a certain age (for us, about two), the danger seems to go away completely. We also knew many multi-child families in which the problem never came up at all, but once it has happened in your family, you should be wary for recurrences. I would definitely follow your doctor's advice about checking up on the baby. A question for you doctors, etc., on .med - Is croup thought to be related to mysterious "crib deaths?" Has any connection ever been found?
slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) (12/05/85)
>> Can anyone tell me more about croup? How serious can this be? >> Does it usually re-occur? >> I have to admit when the doctor told me to check her breathing >> hourly during the night it scared the hell out of me. >Every child in my family (all ten of us) had bouts of croup before we were >two years old. Yes, it is very serious: the baby stops breathing. You must be thinking of something else. Croup just means laryngitis of infants. They have a sore throat, a VERY bad cough, and some difficulty breathing. It's just a very bad cold, essentially. My kids both had it occasionally. It wasn't much to worry about, and the doctor never told me to check breathing. (It wouldn't be necessary, anyway--no one else in the house could sleep for the crying and coughing.) I would assume that you would want to make sure that the baby didn't clog up completely. The breathing stoppage for no apparent reason sounds more like some kind of sleep disorder. -- Sue Brezden ihnp4!drutx!slb ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To search for perfection is all very well, But to look for heaven is to live here in hell. --Sting ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
john@ur-tut.UUCP (John Gurian) (12/05/85)
> Can anyone tell me more about croup? > How serious can this be? > Does it usually re-occur? Croup, or more precisely, acute laryngeo-tracheitis, is a viral infection of the trachea and/or larynx. The virus responsible can change from year to year; currently, parainfluenza type I is the most common pathogen. The virus causes an inflammation (and therefore a narrowing) of the trachea and upper airways. This narrowing is responsible for the "stridor", or inspiratory wheeze, which is characteristic of the disease. Croup is rarely diagnosed if the patient is older than 2 years; it appears that only the immature upper airways of the younger child are susceptible to the amount of swelling necessary to produce respiratory distress. Although it can be a very serious disease if untreated, it is usually not fatal nowadays. Other diseases often confused with croup are asthma and foreign object aspiration, both of which can produce wheezes. Treatment: most important is keeping the child calm & inactive. The more the child cries, the harder it has to breathe, and the worse his/her condition becomes. If the condition is serious enough to warrant hospital admission, the child will be placed in a "croup tent", in which cool mist can be inhaled. No one really knows why this helps so much, but it is thought that the coolness of the mist helps to reduce the swelling of the trachea. If the virus causing the croup is RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), ribavirin, a new (relatively) viri-static agent can be prescribed, but RSV is rarely a cause of croup. Corticosteroids (eg Decamedron) may help, but should be given judiciously since their main purpose, as far as medical Rx is concerned, is to knock out the body's immumne system, which is not a bright idea when the body has an infection to begin with. Note that: 1) I am not board-certified in pediatrics, and 2) I never evaluated or examined your child, so I would never presume to be qualified to say whether Decamedron was necessary here. After one bout of croup, I don't believe a child stands a much higher risk than anyone else does of contracting it again. In fact, it could be less, depending on how many serotypes of paraflu I are out there. John Gurian Univ. Rochester School of Medicine seismo!rochester!ur-tut!john