Medico Helpers

VOMITING IN CHILDREN When we say vomiting in children, we usually have parents who would come and tell us that “my child is vomiting”. We need to spend little more time to ask few more questions – can it be vomiting or retching or nausea? After you ask these questions, you’ll realize that in most condition our patient may have all three of them. But it will help us to differentiate one over the other, in some of the rare cases. In vomiting, we’ve forceful expulsion of gastric contents due to abdominal and diaphragmatic contraction. In case of nausea, vomitus doesn’t come out and there’s an unpleasant feeling and autonomic changes which precede vomiting and the patients complaints of excessive salivation and difficulty in breathing just prior to nausea feeling. In pediatrics, we need to differentiate between vomiting and regurgitation. We should understand that if the child throws up without or minimal effort then its always Regurgitation; but if its forceful then it is vom...