Children’s immune system is not well developed. Under the same environment, they are more vulnerable to germs than adults, and are also more prone to colds and fevers.
Baoma once complained that when the baby has a cold and fever, it is inevitable to have an examination when going to the hospital. Almost every time, blood tests are required. Is this examination used in what? Is it necessary to do it every time? Can’t doctors take a good look at the children and prescribe medicine for them? It’s blood drawing and examination. Do you want us to spend more money?
The child is already very uncomfortable when he is ill, and he has to take blood for examination. Parents will inevitably feel distressed, which Ding Ma can understand.
However, doctors also have [difficulties] in examining children.
The doctor’s grievances
Cold and fever are common diseases. Many parents think that such common diseases should be very simple to deal with. However, these seemingly simple problems may hide problems that make clinicians feel deeply headache.
The headache lies not only in colds and fevers, but also in symptoms and diagnosis, as well as the evaluation and treatment of the disease. It also lies in the understanding of [cold] [fever]. We ordinary people and doctors are very different.
Colds actually contain dozens of diseases.
In medicine, [cold] is usually used as the common name of [acute upper respiratory tract infection], which includes acute rhinitis, acute pharyngitis, acute tonsillitis and other diseases. In addition to the above diseases, what we call [cold] in our daily life may also be the early manifestation of influenza, measles, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, whooping cough, scarlet fever and other acute infectious diseases.
The manifestations of these diseases are similar. Most people who have not studied medical knowledge are likely to call these dozens of diseases [colds] in general.
Fever is only a manifestation of the disease, and the etiology may be complicated.
Fever can be a symptom of common cold, as well as a symptom of many diseases such as acute rash, Kawasaki disease, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, herpetic angina, hand-foot-mouth disease, rheumatic fever, septicemia, etc.
Many of these diseases that can cause fever are caused by virus infection. For example, more than 90% of acute upper respiratory tract infection (cold) is caused by virus infection. Infections such as bacteria and mycoplasma can also cause fever. Of course, some are not caused by infection, such as immune factors can also cause fever.
It is precisely because of the complexity of the disease that doctors sometimes need to pass some examinations to help judge whether the child is suffering from what.
Is blood test routine used in what?
Generally speaking, when a child has fever and other cold symptoms, blood tests are usually conducted for the following two purposes:
Step 1 Help determine the type of infection
As mentioned briefly in many medical related articles, blood routine can help distinguish bacterial infection from viral infection.
Generally speaking, the peripheral blood white blood cell (WBC) count is not high or low, and the lymphocyte count or percentage increases, indicating virus infection. WBC count and neutrophil count or percentage increased, indicating bacterial infection.
Peripheral blood leukocyte (WBC) count and neutrophil percentage in blood routine are one of the traditional screening tools to judge whether bacterial infection is present, but the results cannot be used as absolute judgment criteria.
2. Assess the risk of disease
WBC count is also often used as one of the criteria to assess the risk of serious diseases in children with fever.
The decrease or lack of neutrophils can be seen in various infections, and may also be secondary to tumors, poisoning or taking certain drugs. However, whether caused by what, the decrease or lack of neutrophils may cause the body’s ability to resist bacterial infection to decline, thus causing serious bacterial infection.
In addition, there are many other indexes in blood routine, such as the count and percentage of median cells (three classifications) or monocytes, eosinophils and basophils (five classifications), etc. These values have different meanings and are of great significance to health education and doctors’ adjustment of treatment plans.
Is it necessary to have a blood test every time?
Blood routine has its function, but it does not mean that blood routine needs to be tested every time.
If you go to see a doctor because of a cold or fever, then the blood routine is not a routine test, that is to say, the blood routine is not required to be tested every time you catch a cold or have a fever, especially in the early stage of the disease.
Because, although blood routine can help distinguish bacterial infection from viral infection, its results are only a reference and cannot be completely distinguished from viral infection and bacterial infection according to the results of blood routine.
The decrease of WBC count may also be the manifestation of serious bacterial infection, while the increase of WBC count and neutrophil count or percentage is not necessarily bacterial infection, but also the possibility of viral infection, especially in the early stage of the disease, this judgment standard is even more inaccurate.
Recent studies have also shown that the use of peripheral blood WBC count and neutrophil percentage alone as screening tools for bacterial or viral infection is neither sensitive nor accurate, and it is difficult to draw a clear distinction standard, especially for babies under 3 months old.
Whether to have a routine blood test or not requires a doctor to make a comprehensive and detailed medical history and careful physical examination on the basis of careful face-to-face examination, depending on the specific situation.
Parents can refer to the following principles to reach communication and agreement with doctors:
- In general, It is of little significance to test the blood routine within the first 12 hours of a cold or fever. If you consider a cold or fever without other symptoms, If the mental state is also good, priority should be given to the virus infection, so there is no need to rush to test the blood routine in the first few days. If the fever exceeds 3 foot days (72 hours), the blood routine can be considered. If the fever exceeds 5 foot days (120 hours), the blood routine is strongly recommended and the possibility of other serious diseases needs to be ruled out.
Parents are inevitably worried about their children’s illness, but now parents are really a little too anxious sometimes.
If the baby has been more than three months old and just started to have a fever, and the mental state is also good, this kind of situation can not struggle with whether to go to the hospital for blood tests. You can observe the baby’s condition first and give corresponding care according to the symptoms. (Click to see how to nurse the baby when he has a cold and fever.)