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If your child has a persistent cough, chest pains and fever, it may be a bad cold or the flu – or it may be something potentially more dangerous.
That could be the case for Christopher, who has been coughing for days.
“He was seen by a doctor and apparently diagnosed with a potential sinus infection and strep infection and started on an antibiotic,” says Dr. Cedric Miller, in the Emergency Pediatrics Department at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “But he hasn’t seemed to get any better.”
“The cough has persisted and just doesn’t seem to be improving,” says Christopher’s dad.
Christopher also has pain in his chest.
“Where are you hurting?” Miller asks Christopher. “Okay, right there in your left side.”
“[It hurts] a little bit when I swallow,” adds Chris.
“When a child … with cough and fever says that he hurts in a specific part of his chest, that raises the possibility that pneumonia is present,” Miller explains.
So he orders x-rays, and the results are conclusive.
“Young Mr. Christopher definitely has pneumonia in his left, lower lung,” says Miller. “Not everybody who gets the germ will necessarily get pneumonia. The germ is the same germ that we find in people with sinus infections and ear infections.”
The most likely culprit is a streptococcal germ that settled in his lungs and became pneumonia. To shake it, he’ll need an even stronger antibiotic than the one he’s been getting.
“We have to be a little careful in Christopher’s case,” says Miller, “because he was on an antibiotic and seemed not to be getting better. So we will follow him carefully with his pediatrician to make sure he doesn’t have one of those more serious bacterial infections.”
But if it’s an ordinary germ, with rest andstronger medicine, Miller says Christopher should be fine.
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