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Common cold - Management
How should I diagnose the common cold in younger children and infants?
- Ask about the child's symptoms. Parents may report the child as having the following symptoms.
- Restlessness or irritability.
- Fever.
- Nasal congestion with sneezing and nasal discharge. Severe nasal congestion may interfere with feeding, breathing, and sleep.
- Cough. Occasionally, vomiting may follow a bout of coughing.
- Examine younger children and babies, primarily to rule out more serious causes of the reported symptoms.
- Look for sneezing, coughing, or nasal discharge (rhinorrhoea).
- Measure the child's temperature. A fever in the range of 38–39°C is common in preschool children.
- Consider examining:
- The throat. This is not usually inflamed in the common cold, and an inflamed throat in the absence of nasal symptoms is more likely to indicate streptococcal infection.
- Cervical lymph nodes. Mildly enlarged but nontender nodes are consistent with the common cold.
- The ear drum. Look for for signs of acute otitis media.
- Investigations, such as nasal and throat swabs, are not necessary to diagnose the common cold.
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