Tips on how to treat children's coughs due to damp weather

Many parents worry when their children cough during humid weather, but not all coughs are harmful and using cough medicine for children requires special attention.

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Tien Dung, former Head of the Pediatrics Department (Bach Mai Hospital) said that children mainly suffer from upper and lower respiratory tract infections, with coughing fits that make parents worried.

In fact, coughing due to respiratory infections in children, even if it causes vomiting, is not a troublesome problem. It rarely makes children exhausted and sleepless, but on the contrary, it is beneficial because it helps to expel mucus and phlegm. Therefore, Associate Professor Dung recommends that parents stay calm and not try to stop their children's coughs.

Children are being examined at the National Children's Hospital. Photo: Le Mai.

According to Associate Professor Dung, depending on the disease, each cough has different symptoms, so doctors will be the ones to decide whether the child needs medicine and if so, what type to use.

For example, if a child's cough is caused by a cold, virus, or upper respiratory infection, the doctor will prescribe herbal cough medicine to clear the phlegm, even though the cough may "go away without you knowing" after a few days or 1-2 weeks without medication. If you are impatient, parents should look for traditional medicine or homemade cough medicine made from herbs such as honey soaked with kumquat, chives, tangerine peel steamed with honey, or rose steamed with rock sugar.

For coughs caused by pneumonia and bronchitis, children use expectorants with acetylcysteine, which have the effect of thinning mucus and reducing the thickness of phlegm in the lungs. Because the drug works by stimulating the patient to cough to expel phlegm, many parents wonder why their children still cough after taking the medicine, not knowing that the cough is beneficial at this time.

Cough medicines containing the active ingredient carbocysteine ​​also have the same effect as the acetylcysteine ​​group but are only used for respiratory diseases that make it difficult to cough up phlegm such as mild and moderate upper and lower respiratory tract infections.

In case of persistent cough due to allergic rhinitis, nasal allergy sprays or chlorpheniramine, diphenhydramine should be used in combination with other preparations to treat coughs and colds. However, Associate Professor Dung noted that these drugs should not be used for patients with coughs due to bronchitis, pneumonia or acute asthma attacks because they can thicken the mucous membranes, leading to respiratory failure or side effects such as dry mouth, drowsiness, and poor appetite.

If the child has an irritating cough, the doctor will prescribe a group of cough medicines that act on the cough center in the brainstem such as dextromethorphan. The medicine does not loosen phlegm, it only temporarily reduces cough in cases of cough caused by mild irritation in the bronchi, often seen in the common cold. Using dextromethorphan requires special caution because even though it is low in toxicity, taking high doses can cause respiratory depression. Do not use dextromethorphan in children under 2 years old and patients with a lot of phlegm and saliva.

In addition, cough medicine containing codeine also reduces cough through a similar mechanism to dextromethorphan, but dries and thickens bronchial secretions, is not suitable for people with a lot of phlegm, and is not recommended for children under 5 years old.

According to Songkhoe