Patient's question:
How to deal with a 9-month-old baby who has difficulty swallowing?A 9-month-old baby might have caught a cold two days ago. Last night while sleeping, I noticed a slight fever of 37.3°C. I gave her some children's paracetamol, and the fever went down, but now she has difficulty swallowing and is vomiting. The baby is uncomfortable and wants to cry. What kind of medicine should she take?
Doctor's answer:
This is too common. Children with weak spleens and poor constitutions, lacking qi, will cause moisture to become damp and condense into phlegm. The weakness of a child's spleen and stomach is often due to improper milk regulation, leading to stagnation, injuring the spleen and stomach, or eating raw foods, melons, and fruits, damaging the middle yang; or it may be caused by excessive fluid intake due to fever, where the spleen cannot transport it, allowing moisture to accumulate and form phlegm.Advice: The key is to identify the cause of the cough to determine the correct treatment: bacterial respiratory infections should be treated with antibiotics; viral respiratory infections should be treated with antiviral medications; and since most chronic coughs lasting over two months are allergic coughs, the treatment should focus on eliminating allergic inflammation in the respiratory tract.