The duration of common colds and earache It is usually longer than what is mentioned in the guidelines that parents receive in the United Kingdom and the United States.
It seems to be a fairly frequent concern to know the normal duration of the symptoms of the most frequent respiratory infections, although this duration may be conditioned to factors such as patient characteristics or contracted disease.
Most of these infections in children are caused by viruses, and are self-limited, presenting themselves as mild diseases. However, it is useful for parents to know the warning signs before which to take (or bring back) their children to the pediatrician's office, since complications must be treated in a timely manner.
Doctors E. Cuesta (Argentina) and A. Suwezda (Germany), have reviewed a work funded by the National Institute for Health Research, and called “Duration of symptoms of respiratory tract infections in children: systematic review”. He had included studies published in English that had recruited healthy children from 0 to 18 years with ARI (acute respiratory infection), which had been taken to Primary Care or Emergency Services.
Among the main results we find that in 90 percent of the children the earache resolved in seven or eight days, while the throat lasted between two and seven days, the acute cough in 25 days and unspecific respiratory symptoms 16 days. On the other hand, bronchiolitis usually lasts 21 days, the common cold 15, and croup about two days.
Being the periods of duration of the symptoms, more prolonged than those considered until now, there could be the possibility that certain complications, especially superinfections caused by bacteria, will go unnoticed.
This data may not be textually applied in sites that present different climatic, sanitary and educational conditions to the population groups represented in the review; since this was carried out in English-speaking countries, with very high incomes and with important sanitary coverage and cold weather.
