If the baby is ill, it is very necessary to take him to the hospital for a definite diagnosis. But if the doctor’s diagnosis is [acute upper respiratory tract infection] (also known as viral cold) and tells you that there is no specific medicine at present and you are allowed to go home without prescribing medicine for the baby, do you think the doctor is a quack?
Many people will have such a wrong understanding, so they immediately change hospitals and find another [good] doctor to prescribe a bunch of miscellaneous cold medicines. There is no lack of children’s cold medicines recommended in advertisements every day, such as good dolls, Hu Tong, Yucatan, Hui Fei Ning and Ai Chang, and then they go home at ease.
Can this kind of cold medicine really make the cold heal quickly?
Compound cold medicine is not recommended for children under 4 years old.
The common cold is a viral infection and a self-healing disease. Taking or not taking cold medicine will not shorten the course of the cold. Moreover, cold medicine is not a medicine for treating the cause of the cold. All cold medicines are only used to relieve the symptoms of fever, runny nose and the like accompanied by the cold.
The various cold medicines mentioned above, Judging from the composition of drugs, All belong to compound preparations, That is, a drug contains a variety of effective ingredients. For example, Hutong, also known as [pediatric paracetamol yellow Na Min], it not only contains acetaminophen, an analgesic component, but also contains chlorphenamine and other ingredients. Another example is paracetamol methyl hemp, paracetamol alkylamine, ammonia gold Huang Min, pseudo-hemp, phenol hemp and other drugs, which have more than one effective ingredient and are all compound cold medicines.
What are the risks when compound cold drugs are used in children?
1. Lack of dose standards for children
In the past, Europe, America and other countries have also widely used this kind of compound cold medicine, but large-scale clinical evidence shows that this kind of medicine is not only of little effect, but also easy to bring greater risks.
At that time, there were very few clinical data on the use of compound cold drugs for children, so there was no standard dose suitable for children, usually the dose for children calculated according to the adult dose, and there was no way to ensure the safety of children’s medication.
2. That active ingredient are repetitive
In addition, although different compound cold medicines have different drug names, they may contain the same effective ingredients.
For example, [Haodoll] and [Yucatan] have different drug names, but the active ingredients contained are acetaminophen and amantadine. If parents do not notice this, giving [Haodoll] and [Yucatan] to their babies at the same time will easily lead to repeated medication and excessive use of the same active ingredients.
Therefore, after many reports of children dying from overdose of compound cold medicine appeared in the United States, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the withdrawal of all compound cold drugs on the market for children under the age of 2 in 2007. That is to say, children under the age of two are prohibited from taking compound cold medicine. At the same time, the instructions for cold medicine for children of other ages have been revised, and it is clearly stipulated in the drug instructions that [compound cold medicine is not recommended for children under the age of four].
At present, the instructions of children’s compound cold medicines sold in American pharmacies all indicate the age limit:
It is forbidden under the age of two, not recommended under the age of four, children between the ages of four and six can use it under the guidance of doctors, and only children over the age of six can use it according to needs.
The key to relieving cold symptoms is nursing.
People often say [three points for treatment and seven points for nursing], which is the most appropriate sentence for nursing colds.
A cold is a self-healing disease, It has a course from the beginning to the end. The symptoms at the beginning are mainly nasal congestion, runny nose or hoarse voice. This is a cold virus that affects the nose and pharynx. After the virus enters the body, it will cause the body’s immune system to react. The body’s thermoregulatory center will raise the body temperature and develop fever, which usually lasts for 3-5 days. The fever will fall back with cough, which may last for about two weeks.
As mentioned above, there is no special cold medicine and compound cold medicine is not recommended for babies. What should I do?
The scientific treatment method is to take care of the baby in a mild way to relieve the cold symptoms of the baby. Only when necessary will the baby choose to use drugs to control the symptoms, and try to choose unilateral drugs according to the symptoms, i.e. Drugs with only one effective ingredient in the active ingredient item in the drug instructions.
Nasal obstruction, runny nose: drop physiological saline
The symptoms of cold accompanied by nasal congestion are very common, and the baby’s nose blockage will be especially uncomfortable, especially at night, nasal congestion will often wake up the baby.
The milder way to relieve nasal congestion is to drop normal saline into the baby’s nostrils to help the baby keep the nostrils moist, clean the nasal cavity and help them ventilate.
The physiological saline here refers to sterilized physiological sodium chloride used in hospital infusion. Sucked out with a sterilized dropper, A drop into the baby’s nostrils, You can also drop normal saline on the sterilized cotton swab, and then carefully insert it into the baby’s nostrils to stimulate his nose and make him sneeze, so that you can type out the things blocking his nose. If you think it is troublesome to open normal saline in the hospital, you can go to the pharmacy to buy physiological seawater nasal spray, which is slightly more expensive but convenient to use.
If the baby’s runny nose is very serious, in order not to make him wipe his nose so hard, for babies over six months old, drugs containing a single antiallergic ingredient, such as loratadine syrup or cetirizine drops, can be given to him under the guidance of a doctor.
This kind of antiallergic drug has the effect of inhibiting the body’s secretion of histamine, histamine is suppressed, and the symptoms of runny nose are stopped. However, this kind of drug will cause side effects such as drowsiness, dry mouth, dry eyes and dry skin at the same time. It is recommended that if it is not very serious runny nose and sneezing, it should not be used at will.
In addition, drinking more water also helps dilute nasal mucus and makes it easy to discharge.
Cough: Replenish Water
Cough caused by common cold can expel sputum and other secretions from respiratory tract out of the body, which is a way for human body to protect itself.
In particular, most children’s cough is with phlegm. If cough medicine is taken forcibly, sputum will remain in the body, but it is easy to cause more serious respiratory tract infectious diseases such as pneumonia.
If your baby’s cough after catching a cold does not affect his diet, sleep and other daily activities, there is no need to give him medication. You can consider increasing indoor humidity (turning on the humidifier), allowing your baby to drink more water, inhaling water vapor and other ways to relieve cough symptoms.
If the cough still cannot be relieved and affects daily activities, single-component phlegm-resolving drugs, such as ambroxol syrup, acetylcysteine granules, myrtle oil capsules, etc., can be selected for symptomatic treatment, and atomization treatment can also be carried out under the guidance of doctors.
Beware of cold medicine minefields
Although we recommend parents to try their best to use the above methods to relieve the discomfort symptoms of children’s colds, such colds are still everywhere because China has not yet imposed an age limit on compound cold medicines.
If Chinese parents feel that their children’s symptoms make them very uneasy and must give their babies such drugs, please pay attention to the following aspects as much as possible:
1. The same ingredient cannot be reused.
Children’s dosage forms produced by regular pharmaceutical factories must be selected according to the symptoms, and attention should be paid not to reuse drugs containing similar effective ingredients.
For example, compound cold medicines usually contain antiallergic ingredients, which are used to relieve runny nose symptoms. Some cold medicines use chlorpheniramine (commonly known as [chlorpheniramine]), but others use diphenhydramine. Chlorpheniramine and diphenhydramine look different drugs, but they belong to the same category of drugs and cannot be taken at the same time.
2. That same kind of ingredient cannot be reused
Drugs containing similar ingredients cannot be taken at the same time.
For example, chlorphenamine and diphenhydramine are both antiallergic ingredients, and neither of these two ingredients can be taken together with other antiallergic drugs at the same time, including cyproheptadine, loratadine, desloratadine, cetirizine, levocetirizine, fexofenadine, clomastine, etc.
3. Be careful with the camouflage of proprietary Chinese medicines.
There may be parents who think that western medicine has great side effects and proprietary Chinese medicines are natural and have no side effects. Therefore, when choosing cold medicines, they tend to choose proprietary Chinese medicines.
In fact, proprietary Chinese medicines also have side effects, but most of them are not marked in the drug instructions.
In addition, there are some drugs, although they claim to be traditional Chinese medicine, and the drug listing license they have obtained is the approval number of traditional Chinese medicine, but their formula may contain Western medicine ingredients, so be especially careful about such drugs.
For example, 999 Ganmaoling Granules and Vitamin C Yinqiao Tablets contain not only traditional Chinese medicine ingredients, but also western medicine ingredients acetaminophen and chlorphenamine maleate. If other cold medicines containing these two ingredients are taken at the same time, excessive poisoning is easy.
In fact, in May 2012, China’s Food and Drug Administration also issued a notice requiring all compound cold medicines containing amantadine to be banned from infants under one year old on the grounds that the safety and effectiveness of these medicines in this population are still uncertain. The move shows that China is also gradually standardizing the use of compound cold medicines for children.
Editor: Xiaoyan
Author: Ji Lianmei