In the article, we consider whether it is necessary to bring down the temperature of 38 in a child.
Elevated body temperature is the most typical symptom of both acute respiratory viral infections and any infectious disease. Thus, the body stimulates itself, while producing substances designed to eliminate the pathogen. Not everyone knows what temperature you need to bring down in a child. We will tell about it below.
Parents do not need to panic. It is important to learn how to act in each specific situation.
Causes of temperature 38 in a child
Fever is not a disease. This is only a manifestation of the reaction of the human body to disease. With an increase in body temperature, we can talk about the presence of any infectious or inflammatory pathology. And in this case, a high value is a nonspecific reaction to protect the body, which is aimed at combating a pathogenic source, for example, bacteria and viruses.
Only a specialist can determine the cause of the high temperature, so in any case, you should call a pediatrician. Prior to his arrival, it is important to act correctly in this situation.
Do I need to bring down the temperature of 38 in a child, they ask often.
What is dangerous and what is not?
Usually, the damaging effect of an elevated temperature (primarily, thermal damage to the brain) is observed at a temperature of more than 39.5 ° C, but in small patients with an affected brain, it may occur at lower body temperatures. At the same time, a decrease in pressure, depression of consciousness, the appearance of respiratory and heart failure, etc. are noted.
So, is it necessary to bring down the temperature of 38 in a child?
The main cases in which it is necessary to get rid of heat:
- The baby up to three months - more than 38 ° C.
- After three months - more than 39 ° C.
- In a child with a heart disease, affected by the brain or other pulmonary or cardiac pathology, with impaired consciousness from an elevated temperature, with abnormalities of material metabolism or in the presence of seizures in the past - more than 38.5 ° C.
What temperature you need to bring down in a child can also be checked with a doctor.
At high temperatures, cramps indicate an oxygen starvation of the brain. They develop in approximately 3-7% of small patients, most often from six months to five years (mainly in the second year of life). They are observed, as a rule, in children who have suffered a perinatal lesion of the brain of the head, birth trauma, intrauterine infection, as well as in those patients whose relatives suffer from vascular disorders, epilepsy.
Seizures in most children occur only once, however, there may be repeated cases. They usually develop with a viral infection.
What temperature is dangerous for the child? It is necessary to bring down the heat if the baby is very poorly tolerated by this condition, can not sleep and cries.
Normal temperature in a child up to a year
In general, the temperature in a child in the first few months of life most often has elevated values (from 37 to 37.5 degrees). This is a very common situation. By the end of the first year of life, it usually returns to normal, stopping mainly at 36.6 ° C, but can change under the influence of external factors, for example, overheating. In such a situation, if there are no other symptoms of the disease, you do not need to lower the temperature - this is a completely normal case. It is enough to prevent the child from overheating - to maintain the optimum temperature in the room and dress him outside in the weather.
With an increase in temperature caused by the disease, one also does not need to rush with antipyretic drugs, as this is a general protective reaction of the human body to damage or disease. As a rule, experts set a limit value of 38 ° C. It is believed that up to such an indicator, the temperature does not seriously harm the health of the child.
What to do if the child has a temperature of 38 and it does not go astray.
In what cases does the temperature not go astray?
Many parents are very afraid of high temperature and immediately knock it down when the thermometer shows the excess of the norm by only half a degree. Why in such cases it is not necessary to lower the temperature? There are a number of good reasons for this.
In some situations, fever is the only symptom of the disease at the initial stage, and lowering the temperature can distort the real picture of the pathology and complicate the diagnosis.
In fact, a rise in temperature is a protective reaction of the human body, so you need to fight not with temperature (this is what parents often achieve), but with the disease itself. The temperature in this case, as already mentioned, is a loyal assistant in this fight.
When the child is 38 years old and fever, the use of any medication, including antipyretic drugs, poses certain risks: allergic reactions, side effects, damage to the gastric mucosa, bleeding, nasal congestion, etc.
A decrease in temperature during a disease does not reduce the overall duration of a fever.
The child has a temperature of 38 and cold feet
It happens that at a temperature exceeding 38.5 degrees, the baby's hands and feet turn out to be cold.
At high temperatures, cold limbs are not observed in all children.
But some patients under the age of four suffer from febrile seizures. This is the reaction of the child's brain to the arising vascular spasm. Such cramps look much worse than just cold legs or arms. The child suffers from suffocation and hypoxia, he can bite his tongue, blistering discharge from his mouth. This rarely happens, however, parents should be prepared for this development of the situation with the observed coldness of the legs and hands.
For parents, the primary task is to warm the baby as soon as possible. It would seem, why else warm it if the child’s body temperature is 38 and the patient is “on fire”. By warmly covering the baby, you can quickly cope with spasm. Indoor temperature should be within twenty degrees. You need to put on warm pajamas for the baby and cover it with a blanket. With the continued increase and achievement of the indicator from 38.9 to 39.5, you need to remove the blanket, warming only your hands and feet.
How much the temperature 38 holds in a child depends on the reason why it rose.
Heavy drink
For the child you need to organize a plentiful drink. Fever and chills take a lot of fluid from the body, these losses need to be replaced quickly. Everything should be warm, hot and cold drinks should not be given. It is necessary to prepare healing tea with raspberries, chamomile or linden, cook unsweetened compote from dried fruits. Rosehip tea and cranberry juice are good for drinking.
What is forbidden to do with such a reaction? Try to do the opposite. Mechanical attempts to control heat are prohibited. Cold compresses need to be replaced with warm ones. When using vinegar or vodka, you need to pre-warm them (although they are strictly not recommended). You should not disclose the baby, it needs to be covered as described above. You can also not put the child on a wet cold sheet. You need to act competently and calmly.
The temperature should be alert 38 without the symptoms of a cold in a child.
Fever without symptoms of a cold
First of all, parents are trying to establish the causes of fever. They can be non-infectious or infectious: among the non-infectious, the most common is overheating (he ran on, was in the heat for a long time, wrapped up); Also, high temperature in infants without symptoms may appear during teething of the first teeth. The most common infectious causes are viral infections. Infections can be bacterial and viral. They differ in many ways, but the main difference is that the viral type infection passes by itself (it usually takes a week, after which the immunity from the virus is formed), the bacterial infection often has to be treated with antibiotics. Also, with viral infections, other symptoms may be absent (only high fever), with bacterial infections this never happens.
When does a temperature of 38 occur without symptoms of a cold in a child?
Urinary Tract Infections
There is one exception in the number of bacterial infections that occurs precisely in children without any manifestations, except for fever, - infections of the urine excretion pathways. In order not to miss the possible formation of an infection against the background of absent symptoms, a baby with a high temperature is most often prescribed a clinical urine test. Thus, at a child’s temperature without other symptoms, he will either overheat or be attacked by a viral infection.
Infection of urine excretion pathways is a rare case, such concerns are easily refuted by urinalysis. Is it possible to determine what kind of infection a child has before the study and doctor’s arrival? Immediately it is worth saying that the method described below, in no case can not be called an accurate diagnostic method. Usually, in viral illness, children's skin remains pink. With a bacterial infection, the patient turns pale.
Why a child has a temperature of 38 is difficult to understand.
Act if a child has a high fever without other symptoms, depending on the underlying cause (at least the alleged) occurrence. Thus, at the slightest likelihood of developing an infection in the ways of urine excretion, you need to pass it for analysis. Upon confirmation of the diagnosis, the correct antibacterial treatment will be prescribed by the doctor.
In infants with teething first teeth, the temperature rarely reaches alarming values, so you can do without antipyretic drugs and calling a pediatrician. The child needs to be given a chilled teether, to drink, to well ventilate the room before going to bed. When the child overheats in the heat or an excess of activity, it is advisable to stay calm in a cool room, drinking plenty of water in a couple of hours normalizes the temperature.
What does Komarovsky say about the temperature in a child?
Recommendations of Dr. Komarovsky
Komarovsky E.O. says that each child is individual, and therefore reacts differently to high temperatures. There are children who calmly play at 39 ° C, and there are those who almost faint at 37.5 ° C. That is why there is no universal advice on how long to wait for normalization of temperature and after what indicator on a thermometer to help the child.
The most important thing is: if the temperature rises, everything must be done to maintain the body's ability to lose heat. It has two ways of loss - if the inhaled air is heated and the sweat evaporates.
According to Komarovsky, at a child’s temperature there are two obligatory actions of a parent: to provide a plentiful drink so that the child has something to sweat; from 16 to 18 degrees in the room - cool air.
Under these conditions, the likelihood that the child's body can not cope with high temperature is low.
It should be noted that in contact with cold spasm of the skin vessels is observed. In the epidermis, blood flow slows down, heat loss and sweat formation are reduced. The temperature of the skin decreases, but the temperature of the internal organs increases, which is very dangerous.
At home, it is forbidden to use physical cooling methods, that is, cold wet sheets, ice warmers, cold enemas, etc. After a visit to a doctor or in hospitals, this is permissible, because before that, specialists prescribe special drugs that eliminate skin vessels spasm. At home, everything must be done to prevent vascular spasm. Therefore, to provide cool air in the room and at the same time quite warm clothes. Thermal particles during the evaporation of sweat leave the body, and thus the body temperature decreases.
There are also several popular methods that accelerate evaporation. For example, put the fan next to a naked baby, rub it with vinegar or alcohol (after grinding, the attraction of sweat to the surface decreases, it evaporates faster). However, it is difficult to imagine how many babies have paid with their lives because of these rubbing.
When the child has already sweated, the body temperature will decrease by itself. If dry skin is rubbed, then the tool used for rubbing is absorbed into the blood through the baby’s delicate epidermis. Rubbing with alcohol (moonshine, vodka) - the addition of alcohol poisoning to the disease. Rubbing with vinegar is an acid poisoning.
Do not rub
The conclusion is obvious - nothing should ever be rubbed. Fans are also prohibited. Therefore, when the baby has sweated, you need to swaddle or change it into warm and dry, and then stop panicking. The higher the temperature, the warmer in the room, the stronger the baby sweats, the more actively you need to drink it. For a child in the first year of life, an optimal drink is a decoction of raisins. If the child is more than a year old, then compote of dried fruits. The formation of sweat is greatly enhanced by tea with raspberries. Therefore, parents must be sure that the baby has something to sweat, that is, give something to drink before the raspberries. But in any case, children under one year old should not be given this berry.
It should be remembered that fluid is required to prevent blood clotting. Any drink will enter the blood from the stomach only after the temperature of the liquid is equal to the temperature of the stomach: if you give a cold drink, it will not be absorbed until it is heated, warm - until it cools down.
Thus, we must strive to ensure that the temperature of the drink used is equal to the temperature of the baby's body (plus or minus five degrees does not count).
Often there are situations when a child does not tolerate a fever. Sometimes it is dangerous due to the fact that he has any diseases of the nervous system, when high temperature can cause seizures. By and large, an indicator of more than 39 degrees, lasting longer than an hour, has a large number of negative effects.
So, Dr. Komarovsky identifies three situations when you can use drugs. These include: poor heat tolerance; temperature over 39 ° C; associated pathologies of the nervous system.
However, he notes that the effectiveness of any drugs decreases if the main tasks have not been solved: ensuring the correct drinking regimen and lowering the air temperature in the room.
We figured out whether it is necessary to bring down the temperature of 38 in a child.