Bronchitis - this diagnosis affects many parents eerily, prompting a desire to actively treat all possible medicines. Even when a doctor prescribes a harmless medicine for bronchitis for children, for example, a mucolytic remedy, some mothers seem to be inadequate and they start looking for "magic" pills. Usually, such searches end in a drugstore and purchase of antibiotics. But antibiotics for children with bronchitis are not always necessary and can even provoke complications.
When antibiotics are not needed?
Before deciding what to give a child with bronchitis, you need to get information about the origin of the disease. In the overwhelming majority of cases, children's bronchitis has a viral origin, which means that antibiotics are not treated in its treatment. If bronchitis is a consequence of an allergic reaction, antibacterial drugs also will not help. Antibiotics are needed only if the disease is provoked by a bacterial infection. To determine the cause of modern medicine makes it possible without difficulty, it is enough to make a sputum culture to understand whether there is a bacterium causative agent or not. Unfortunately, such an analysis takes a certain time, so it is not uncommon for bronchitis drugs for children to be prescribed without examination of microflora. The whole trouble is that if an antibiotic is prescribed without evidence, it has a devastating effect on the children's body:
- first, by killing one bacterium, it allows free reproduction of another, which increases the risk of complications;
- secondly, the use of antibiotics entails a dysbacteriosis;
- Thirdly, antibiotics often cause allergic reactions;
- Fourthly, any excess intake of antibiotics requires subsequent treatment with stronger drugs, since there is a resistance of microorganisms.
Effective antibiotics for bronchitis in children
Of course, if as a result of the analysis a germ-causing agent is detected, the only correct treatment will be the use of antibiotics. There are three groups of effective antibiotics:
- Penicillins and aminopenicillins are long-known drugs that can fight streptococci, pneumococci, staphylococci. Augmentin and amoksiklav - with bronchitis in children, usually these drugs are prescribed penicillin group.
- Cephalosporins - a side effect of this group is quite extensive, they cause nausea, upset, vomiting, they are usually prescribed in case of allergy to penicillin. Children with bronchitis are prescribed cefotaxime, cephalexin, cefaclor, ceftriaxone - with bronchitis in children, the use of all these drugs should be accompanied by the intake of vitamins of group B and C.
- Macrolides - these antibiotics have earned recognition thanks to the ability to destroy even resistant bacteria, penetrating deep into the cells. Another of their advantages is the ability to be excreted from the body through respiratory organs and blood, and not just the kidneys. Rulid, erythromycin, summed - these drugs, recommended for bronchitis in children, rarely cause allergic reactions.
Rules for taking antibiotics
Whatever antibiotics have not been prescribed for bronchitis in children, it is important to strictly follow the rules for their admission. You can not interrupt the course of treatment, even if the child already feels well - usually the instructions specify the exact number of days of treatment. It is also important not to disturb the reception time, so that all intervals between drug ingestion in the body were the same. It is necessary to drink antibiotics with sufficient water. It is extremely important in parallel with antibiotics to take probiotics to restore microflora.