Many parents often fear about dehydration if a child gets sick or experiences vomiting and diarrhea. Luckily, the serious complications of dehydration can be avoided by recognizing the early indications and seeking immediate medical care.
Children and dehydration
It is good to note that children do not end up dehydrated easily. Dehydration is likely to occur if a child loses more fluids than what is taken in either because they are excessively vomiting or has frequent episodes of watery diarrhea. A big mistake is that the child is given too much to drink too rapidly which usually results to more vomiting.
How to detect dehydration
Among the characteristic indications that the doctor will check to determine if the child is dehydrated include the following:
- Child lost weight. The degree of weight loss typically correlates to how dehydrated the child is, thus 5% weight loss likely indicates that he/she is 5% dehydrated.
- Child urinates less often. The frequency and amount of urination is checked by the doctor.
- The presence of tears, moist tongue and mouth and whether or not the eyes appear sunken.
- Capillary refill is checked by briefly pressing the nail bed of the child to see if it turns pale or white and check the time frame for it to return to normal.
- The skin fold recall or turgor test is done by gently pinching the skin on the abdomen, hold it for a few seconds and release to check how long it takes to return to its normal position.
Indications of mild dehydration
Many children who are unwell either with a common cold or minor stomach bug will end up with trifling or no dehydration. Most children are attentive and appear normal with the following:
- Normal level of thirst or might refuse some liquids
- Normal to slightly reduced urine output
- Moist tongue and mouth
- Less than 3% weight loss
- Capillary refill less than 2 seconds
- Normal heart rate, breathing, pulse rate and warm extremities
- Eyes are not sunken
Indications of a mild to moderate case
- Increased level of thirst
- Reduced urine output
- Dry mouth and tongue
- 3-9% weight loss
- Capillary refill higher than 2 seconds
- Normal to slightly elevated heart rate, normal to rapid breathing and cool extremities
- Slightly sunken eyes
- Recoil on the skin turgor test is less than 2 seconds