In order not to spoil your vacation by waiting for many hours in an Emergency Department with a child with a cold, pediatrician Mihai Craiu recommends that you resort to this measure only if several conditions are met.
“So that you don’t ruin your vacation by waiting many hours in an ER with a child with a cold (an otherwise healthy child – this post is NOT about children who have major health problems outside of common cold episodes) I would like to ask you to look at the image below”it is stated in a FB post of the Spitalul Virtual de Copii (SVC) page, an educational virtual space established by pediatrician Mihai Craiu, intended to increase the level of pediatric medical knowledge.
“If the cold started a few hours ago or last night, no analysis is going to give you the answers you want: is it a serious illness? is it a viral illness or a bacterial illness? is antibiotic treatment necessary or are antipyretics sufficient?”the cited source shows.
Why not go to the ER?
Because it takes more than 2 days from the onset of a cold with fever until changes in the hemogram appear: “In other words, we are GOING to visit an overcrowded UPU if a “normal” cold has just started.
Specialists from the SVC claim that instead of an effective diagnosis and treatment, they will choose waiting hours: “it’s not good to wait 5-6 hours next to other sick children, just because you’re scared, or because you have plane tickets tomorrow, or an important party.”
Your child, who has a fever for 4, 6 or 12 hours, will not have any significant changes in the white blood cell count or white blood cell count – again, for normal children without comorbidities! – points out SVC’s post.
Even the correlation with CRP (C-reactive protein) values does not bring additional information in the first 1-2 days.
“You will only leave the Emergency Department (probably…) with another illness borrowed from the 20 sick children waiting in the triage area”, it shows in the post.
When you have to go to UPU
Finally, the post specifies when we should, in fact, go to the Emergency Department with a child with a cold:
“These days go to the UPU only with a child who has a fever and other signs of seriousness (difficult breathing, frequent vomiting, cyanosis or impaired consciousness). If it is usually a healthy child! Because your doctor will only be able to tell you relevant things by clinical examination. Normal tests say NOTHING!! They may now be normal because they are collected too quickly.”
Elena, the mother of a three-year-old child, confirms the SVC post:
“True. Yesterday I first went to the emergency room in Gomoiu, due to the proximity, but in 2 hours of waiting only one child was received. 2 doctors in line 1. I moved with the child to Alfred Rusescu. I waited another two hours, but before us there were 12 children taken in, including 2 infants. Half of the children were at the onset, or their condition had not yet deteriorated. I, with the almost 3-year-old boy, with a fever for a week I waited and saw how the ambulance was used as a taxi or how some parents, with their first child, panicked because of some mucus. I also received the result: influenza type A. But many there were sent home only for the virus or were told to come back if the fever persisted.”
