Patient's question:
The child is 4 months old, male, and has been coughing slightly for the past few days. During severe coughing fits, he experiences dry heaving, vomiting a lot, and sometimes struggles to breathe for one or two minutes. There is also some nasal discharge. In addition to the coughing, there has been a slight runny nose recently. Normally, he has a mild cough, and it feels like his throat is itchy....Doctor's answer:
Ten babies out of nine cough! Because the respiratory tracts of babies are still fragile and their growth and development are not yet mature, any slight disturbance can often lead to respiratory diseases again. From a medical perspective, a baby's cough is a protective reflex action of the body to expel respiratory secretions or foreign bodies. In other words, coughing is a protective physiological phenomenon in babies. However, if the cough is too severe and interferes with eating, deep sleep, and rest, it loses its meaning of protecting the baby.Coughing in newborns should be carefully monitored for conditions such as aspiration pneumonia and congenital abnormalities in lung development. In older children, coughing is more commonly associated with respiratory infections. In preschoolers, coughing should be thoroughly investigated for airway transmission and foreign bodies in the airways.
Coughing time If a baby coughs in the morning, it is most likely a chronic condition, such as chronic inflammation of the upper respiratory tract or chronic tonsillitis. If a baby coughs at night, it could be due to conditions like pertussis or acute spasmodic laryngitis.
The action of coughing can be compressed into four steps:
1. Short and deep inhalation;
2. Glottis closure;
3. Contraction of the diaphragm and intercostal muscles, with increased intrapulmonary pressure;
4. Glottis opening, with high-pressure air in the lungs being forcefully expelled outwards due to rapid diaphragmatic contraction.
These four consecutive actions combine to form a complete "cough" process, which also determines the different characteristics, rhythms, sounds, and properties of the cough.
Coughing characteristics
- Dry or irritative cough: More common in upper respiratory tract infections, tracheitis, pneumonia, and foreign bodies in the pharynx.
- Wet or productive cough: More common in bronchitis, bronchiectasis, lung abscesses, and tuberculosis.
Coughing rhythm
- Single cough: More common in laryngitis and tracheitis.
- Paroxysmal or spasmodic cough: More common in foreign bodies in the trachea, pertussis, and bronchial asthma.
- Periodic cough: More common in chronic bronchitis and bronchiectasis.