When a child is poisoned, parents must know how to quickly and effectively come to his aid. The most common is food poisoning. It can be caused by the use of low-quality foods containing toxins or pathogens. Products may be of animal or vegetable origin. For example, mushrooms, poisonous plants, spoiled food. This article will discuss the causes, symptoms of administration, as well as the treatment of this disease, methods of first aid.
Features
When a child is poisoned, you must clearly follow a certain algorithm in order to provide timely and effective assistance. Food poisoning is usually triggered by an intestinal infection. It includes a large group of diseases caused by viruses and bacteria. More often than others, infections such as salmonellosis, dysentery, campylobacteriosis, escherichiosis, yersiniosis are found. Intestinal infections affect patients regardless of age. Often you have to face the fact that a small child has been poisoned.
In most cases, in children, the departure can be caused by poisonous mushrooms, which retain dangerous properties even after all kinds of processing methods. In addition, poisonous plants provoke intoxication, some even when in contact with them or their juice.
Causes
It is important to always know what to do if the child is poisoned. In this case, you need to understand what caused the intestinal infection. Children often become victims of the so-called "dirty hands disease". It is easiest to catch this infection through dirty objects or hands.
The disease caused by E. coli called Escherichia appears due to fermented milk products - yoghurts, kefir. Staphylococci are actively distributed in the warm season in cakes and creams, which can also lead to foodborne infections.
The causative agents of salmonellosis enter the human body through contaminated products. Most often, it is dirty greens or vegetables, eggs, chicken, sausages, boiled sausage. Yersinia carry rodents that could run over fruits and vegetables, and the man then did not thoroughly wash them and became infected ..
How does the infection spread?
In order to understand what to do if the child is poisoned, it is necessary to understand what processes are taking place. As soon as the pathogen enters the body, it begins to secrete toxins in different parts of the gastrointestinal tract. Intoxication begins, which is accompanied by an inflammatory process in the intestine. Due to severe vomiting and loose stools, dehydration occurs.
The very first symptom when a child is poisoned is abdominal pain, profuse vomiting, loose stools with impurities of greenery, mucus, and streaks of blood may appear. Vomiting precedes or is accompanied by fever. Children can hardly tolerate this condition, as their body is much weaker than in adults. Therefore, parents need to know how to behave if the child is poisoned and vomiting does not give him rest. In this case, minors appear weakness, lethargy, headache. They categorically refuse to eat. All these symptoms are caused by the negative effects of microbes on tissues and organs.
Mushroom poisoning
Especially should be feared if the child is poisoned and vomits, and the reason for this is poisonous mushrooms. It is believed that the hardest to tolerate is the use of pale toadstool. The phalloidin contained in it penetrates the circulatory system, begins to dissolve and destroy red blood cells. Poisoning in this case can be fatal. A lethal dose of poison is found in only a quarter of a hat of a pale toadstool.
Another dangerous mushroom is fly agaric. It contains toxins called muscaridin and muscarine. The effect of these poisons occurs in the period from 30 minutes to ten hours, so it is not always possible to quickly figure out what the true cause of the disease state was.
In some cases, edible or conditionally edible mushrooms can provoke food poisoning in children and adults, when the conditions for their preparation are violated. Do not eat stale or old ones, poisonous protein breakdown products may appear in them.
If you can preserve the mushrooms yourself at home, this can cause a serious illness such as botulism. Its pathogens come from the soil, and then develop in the absence of oxygen in clogged banks, leading to the formation of a strong and toxic poison.
Diagnostics
If the child is poisoned with vomiting, the doctor will tell you what to do. To do this, he will need to make an accurate diagnosis based on the overall clinical picture. In some cases, additional laboratory tests may be necessary to establish the causative agent of the disease. For this, a blood test, feces, vomit is taken.
In most cases, the first symptoms of administration appear within 40 hours from the moment of contact with the pathogen. It all starts with dizziness, headache. If this is mushroom poisoning , then a feeling of unconscious anxiety appears. A little later, the clinical picture is supplemented by diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramps. In severe cases, this condition is accompanied by a rare pulse, cold sweat.
If a child sets off poison contained in a fly agaric, vomiting, nausea, thirst, weakness and profuse sweating appear. In some cases, hallucinations, delusions, shortness of breath, and a rare pulse are possible.
With botulism, dizziness and headache appear, vision decreases, and a feeling of dry mouth appears. Visual perception is an important symptom by which you can immediately understand what the reason for administration is in botulinum toxin. The patient begins to double in the eyes, everything is obscured by fog, the reaction of the pupils to the light becomes very weak, the eyelids are constantly lowered, while movements are difficult, the gait is uncertain. It is noteworthy that while maintaining a normal body temperature.
Treatment
Therapy should be started as soon as you find signs of an eating disorder in your child. In parallel, call a doctor at home. Only a doctor can make a decision: is it possible to treat at home or does the baby need urgent hospitalization.
Most importantly, before the doctor arrives, compensate for salt and liquid that were lost during this time by the body. To do this, give the baby water. Drinking should be fractional and private - one teaspoon or tablespoon every five to ten minutes. It is best to give the child fruit drinks, compote, a five percent glucose solution, tea or Regidron salt-glucose solution.
Once diarrhea has begun, use enterosorbents. These can be preparations "Polyphepan", "Smecta", "Mikrosorb". When you find greens, blood or mucus in the patient’s stool, be sure to inform your doctor about this, then the patient will be prescribed antibiotics.
If the doctor has decided to leave the baby at home, use a sparing diet when the child becomes better and he wants to eat. In most situations, it is recommended that the first time after poisoning, give kefir, rice porridge on the water, crackers, mashed potatoes without butter and milk, mashed vegetarian soups. As a dessert, you can offer a baked apple. You need to eat a little, but often, at short intervals.
In case of mushroom poisoning, ambulance is indispensable. In a pinch, take your child to the nearest hospital on your own. Botulism is treated only in the infectious ward. As a therapy there, the patient will be given anti-botulinum serum, which effectively neutralizes toxins.
In case of poisoning with plant poison, it is necessary to eliminate the poison that has appeared in the body or reduce its toxicity using an antidote. It is important to take all possible first aid measures for the child before the doctor arrives.
In any case, regardless of what caused the poisoning, you need to induce vomiting so that the body gets rid of harmful toxins. This should be done by irritating the root of the tongue or pharynx.
Help baby
Especially dangerous is the condition when a child is poisoned in a year. At this age, the baby can not tell anything about the symptoms, so parents can only guess what exactly it hurts.
If a patient who has been poisoned is breast-fed or breast-fed, with the first symptoms, you need to pause feeding, begin to drink plenty of boiled water.
If the condition improves after some time, you can return to your usual diet.
You should change the diet if the child is poisoned in a year. What to do, the pediatrician will tell. In most cases, after a pause of about eight hours, the baby is recommended to give sour-milk mixtures into which rice broth can be added. The rest of the complementary foods you introduced earlier can only be returned on the third day. It is important not to include anything new in his diet until complete recovery. The menu should only contain products that are already familiar to the body.
First aid for poisoning
The danger is poisoning with toxic substances that can enter the child’s body through the respiratory tract, digestive system or skin.
Specialists divide toxic substances into three categories. The first class includes the most dangerous compounds. These are mushrooms, plants, industrial poisons, household chemicals, agricultural products, animal poisons and toxic gases.
Dangerous compounds - alcohol, medicinal substances, conditionally edible mushrooms and plants fall into the second class.
In the third class, conditionally hazardous compounds, including edible mushrooms, non-toxic plants that become toxic when grown on waste-contaminated land, are improperly treated with pesticides.
Abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea are not the only signs of poisoning. Symptoms depend on the toxic substance that provoked intoxication. If vomiting occurs, the child is poisoned, what should I do? Every parent should know this.
The first step is to call an ambulance. Remember that the emergency service must go to call any patient in Russia, regardless of whether he has a health insurance policy or other documents. During an ambulance call you can be connected to a poison control center where you can get the necessary advice.
Not a simple situation when a child is poisoned at home. What to do first? It is necessary to ensure a comfortable position, it is advisable to put him to bed, to be constantly nearby until a team of doctors arrives.
If the baby is vomiting, put him down or lay him down with his head in his lap. When it is not known which toxic substance caused the disease, vomit can help make a diagnosis. Therefore, the use of the pelvis will be preferable to the toilet.
If the child is unconscious, it must be put on its side. If possible, use your finger to clean your mouth of vomit by wrapping it in a handkerchief. Make sure that vomiting does not interfere with breathing.
Before doctors arrive, try to determine the cause of the poisoning yourself. When the child is conscious, ask what he ate, examine his face, body and clothes for specific odors, redness, stains.
Watch the baby carefully, noting everything that happens to him. It will also help establish the cause of the poisoning. Do not self-medicate until a doctor arrives. If there is no ambulance for a long time, consult what to do next with your pediatrician or toxicologist.
Many toxic substances have antidotes that neutralize the negative effect. They can be ethyl alcohol or vegetable oil, which can be found at home.
Chemistry poisoning
If the child has been poisoned by chemistry, it is strictly forbidden to induce vomiting through the esophagus. Repeated passage of hazardous fluids can cause additional burns to tissues and make breathing difficult.
In case of alkali and acid poisoning, children are first given the opportunity to drink vegetable oil. The amount depends on age: up to three years - one teaspoon, up to seven years - dessert, and after seven - a tablespoon.
If a child has been poisoned by household chemicals that have penetrated the skin, clothing contaminated with a toxic substance must be removed. After washing the affected areas with soapy water and warm water. Wash your entire body if possible.
Prevention
Like any painful condition, in most cases, poisoning can be prevented. Prevention consists in observing basic hygiene rules. Be sure to wash your hands after using the toilet and before eating. Rinse fruits and vegetables thoroughly with boiling water, store cooked dishes in the refrigerator for no more than two days, boil milk, especially if you give it to a child. Exclude the purchase of products in questionable stores, visiting a fast food cafe.
In warm and hot times it is better not to cook for the future. Use caution when swimming in water. The causative agents of some intestinal infections can persist there for up to 50 days. If the child has had dysentery, he remains the carrier of the disease for a month. All this time, his contacts with other children should not be allowed.
Prevention of poisoning by plant poisons should consist in the implementation of certain rules. Small children should not be allowed to pick mushrooms and berries on their own. Up to five years, it is generally better not to give mushrooms, since the children's body does not have enough enzymes to digest them. In this case, the likelihood of poisoning is very high.