How to Treat Bronchitis in Children

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Doctor David Hill and today we're going to be talking about how to treat bronchitis in children. Now, bronchitis is sort of an older medical term and it's gone out of favor in the last ten to fifteen years when we talked about childhood illness. What we're really talking about is cough illness and there are many causes of cough in children. Many children who cough chronically, especially at night or with exercise, may suffer from asthma or allergies and they need to be accessed by a doctor to figure out if that might be the case and to be treated appropriately. Remember asthma can be a life threatening condition and that chronic irritating cough may be the sign that you get that the child needs an important medication to keep him from having a worse asthma attack. Most commonly we see coughing in the setting of an acute viral illness. It's important to know that the cough that comes with a cold or a viral upper respiratory tract infection can last as long as three weeks and still be normal. Cough is probably the complaint that brings the most parents in to see the pediatrician. The child's not sleeping at night, they're driving you crazy, they're cranky, it's really awful. So, figuring out what the problem is and what we do or don't need to do about it is really important. If we figure out the cough is due to a virus and we know that there is nothing we can do to treat that, then we turn our attentions to what are we going to do for the symptom of cough. The best thing in children over age one is actually honey. A teaspoon of honey, pretty much as often as you want to give it, is as good a cough suppressant as we've ever found. Over-the-counter cough medicines like dextromethorphan or combination cold products are really no longer in favor among pediatricians. They've never been shown to be effective at reducing cough. And especially in children under age six, we feel like the risks of giving these medicines are greater than any potential benefit of giving them. So if you have a bottle of cough medicine lying around, pour it down the drain because if you've got a child under the age six it's more likely to do harm than to help. Now cold symptoms that go on longer than about ten to fourteen days accompanying a cough may suggest a bacterial rather than sinusitis; especially if there's a fever that last more than three days, if it goes away and then comes back. In this case the doctor's probably going to want to prescribe and antibiotic to make it go away. Shortness of breath, whizzing and chest pain are never normal and if you see your child struggling to breathe or you hear the child wheezing or the child is telling you that his or her chest hurts, that deserves an immediate evaluation, even an emergency room if that's the only place that you can be seen at that particular time. So, remember there are lots of reasons for children to cough and figuring out what the reason is and treating it appropriately is really the key to making sure that your child comes out safe and healthy. Talking about treating pediatric cough, I'm Doctor David Hill."