How To Handle Cold and Cough in Babies

When parents bring their children to health facilities, cough and cold are frequent complaint expressed by parents who bring their children for treatment. There are times when cough and cold easily treated even ordinary resolves itself without treatment, but there are also coughs and colds that do not heal even after taking various medications.

Coughing and sneezing is the body's natural defense effort, which is a primitive reflex protection to discard excessive mucus or foreign bodies in the airways. This reflex caused by stimulation of cough receptors located inside or outside the respiratory tract, the stimulus is chemical or mechanical. Stimuli that can trigger coughing: cold air, foreign bodies, inflammation / swelling of the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract, suppression of the respiratory tract, for example; by tumor, presence of mucus or airway contraction.

Coughing becomes abnormal if continued long and has been perceived as a nuisance. Prolonged cough in children is not uncommon even always cause anxiety in the elderly. In addition there can be complications of the disease causing the cough may also disrupt sleep, growth and development of children.

Conventionally, chronic cough is defined as cough for more than three weeks, but respiratory infections can also give symptoms of cough over 3 weeks. Chronic cough often occurs not only in one episode but it can occur repeatedly. Thus, defined recurrent chronic cough is a cough that lasts for at least 3 consecutive weeks or at least 3 episodes within 3 months with or without symptoms of other breath.

Chronic cough in some cases, normal in children and has a good prognosis, but when unusual and severe cough, some underlying disorder may be present.

Causes

Chronic cough is not a stand-alone disease, but a symptom of various diseases both within and outside the respiratory tract. Possible causes of chronic cough and cold in children:

• Infection
• Bronchitis because of recurring virus is the most frequent and classically symptoms as cough along with upper respiratory tract infection.
• Tuberculosis should also be considered in the presence of chronic cough, especially if there is secondary infection.
• Sinusitis, a clinical research claimed 37.1% of patients with chronic cough, a CT scan showed sinusitis.

Relationship between cough and allergy

Allergies are abnormal reactions to one or certain materials, for example; house dust, animal fur, pollen, drugs, or food, respiratory allergies can manifest clinically as asthma.
Psychogenic cough.
Chronic dry cough without evidence of an underlying cause, usually a habit lost during the night / child's bed.

Chronic cough in which there is a serious disorder in the lungs

Signs or warning of serious lung diseases that underlie further examination:

• Coughing during the newborn.
• Chronic pneumonia virus (cytomegalovirus / CMV, chlamydia).
• Coughing after eating, gastroesophageal reflux, or direct aspiration into the lungs.
• Cough started and sustained after the choke, the possibility of foreign objects.
• Purulent cough suppurative lung disease.

Handling Cold and Cough in Babies

The role of parents is very great, because it knows clearly the manifestation of cough and colds, for example regarding the frequency, time trigger, as well as other accompanying symptoms, which must be considered in children cough and cold recurring:

• Note the trigger / allergens that cause the appearance of cough.
• Keep away from cigarette smoke exposure.
• Avoid drinking cold.
• Exercise.
• Pay attention to fluid intake, adequate fluid can dilute phlegm and protect the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract.
• Note the nutritional intake of children.