Acute pharyngitis in children: possible treatment options

Clinical picture in acute pharyngitis in a child

Acute inflam­ma­tion of the phar­ynx is accom­pa­nied by quite spe­cif­ic symp­toms.

• First of all, the child begins to com­plain of burn­ing and dry­ness, sore throat, pain when swal­low­ing. In some cas­es, super­fi­cial dry cough­ing, hoarse­ness of voice are addi­tion­al­ly added.
• The body tem­per­a­ture of the baby may remain with­in the nor­mal range or slight­ly increase. High fever with pharyn­gi­tis, as a rule, is due to the under­ly­ing infec­tion, against which the throat was affect­ed, and not to the pharyn­gi­tis itself.
• As part of the gen­er­al intox­i­ca­tion syn­drome that occurs due to an infec­tious process, headaches, weak­ness, exces­sive sweat­ing, and so on can occur.

It has been not­ed that in chil­dren of the first year of life, inflam­ma­to­ry lesions of the throat are more severe than in oth­er age groups. There may be a sig­nif­i­cant increase in body tem­per­a­ture, refusal to eat, tear­ful­ness and anx­i­ety, dif­fi­cul­ty swal­low­ing, and so on.

Tactics of treatment of acute pharyngitis in children

To begin with, in the event of acute pharyn­gi­tis, it is nec­es­sary to elim­i­nate any irri­tat­ing effects on the mucous mem­brane of the phar­ynx. The child should not be giv­en sour, spicy food, too cold or hot dish­es. It is also extreme­ly impor­tant to main­tain the opti­mal tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty in the room in which the baby is locat­ed, to pre­vent hypother­mia.

Any drug ther­a­py should be car­ried out only as pre­scribed by a doc­tor. It is for­bid­den to use any drugs on your own.

For old­er chil­dren, a spe­cial­ist may rec­om­mend gar­gling with anti­sep­tic solu­tions or herbal infu­sions. Local anti-inflam­ma­to­ry and anti­sep­tic drugs are also used, for exam­ple, lozenges with ambazon, allowed from the age of three.

As an etiotrop­ic ther­a­py, local reme­dies can be used, which include antibi­otics, for exam­ple, a throat spray con­tain­ing gram­i­cidin C and cetylpyri­dini­um chlo­ride, the effec­tive­ness of which in the treat­ment of pharyn­gi­tis in chil­dren was proven by sci­en­tists from the Russ­ian Med­ical Acad­e­my of Con­tin­u­ing Pro­fes­sion­al Edu­ca­tion in a paper pub­lished in 2021.

Also pop­u­lar is such an anti-inflam­ma­to­ry and anal­gesic agent as ben­zy­damine, pro­duced in the form of lozenges, aerosols, and gar­gles.

Addi­tion­al­ly, inhala­tions can be car­ried out, for exam­ple, with saline or alka­line water with­out gas, anti­sep­tics or herbal decoc­tions.