How to Avoid Getting Strep Throat From a Family Member
What Is Strep Throat?
Strep throat is an infection caused by a blazon of bacteria (group A streptococcus). Strep bacteria cause near a third of all sore throats.
Strep throat usually needs treatment with antibiotics. With the proper medical care — and plenty of rest and fluids — most kids get dorsum to school and play inside a few days.
What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Strep Throat?
Symptoms of strep throat include:
- sore throat
- fever
- cherry-red and swollen tonsils
- painful or swollen neck glands
Not all sore throats are strep throats. Often, kids accept a sore throat because of a , which volition usually clear upwardly without medical handling.
Kids who do have strep throat might get other symptoms inside almost 3 days, such every bit:
- red and white patches in the throat
- trouble swallowing
- a headache
- lower breadbasket pain
- general discomfort, uneasiness, or ill feeling
- loss of appetite
- nausea
- rash
Is Strep Throat Contagious?
Strep pharynx is very contagious. Anybody can go it, but near cases are in school-age kids and teens. Infections are common during the schoolhouse year when large groups of kids and teens are in close quarters.
How Do People Get Strep Throat?
The bacteria that cause strep pharynx tend to hang out in the nose and throat. So normal activities like sneezing, cough, or shaking easily tin can easily spread an infection from one person to some other.
Kids with untreated strep throat are more likely to spread the infection when their symptoms are most severe, but tin can still infect others for upwards to 3 weeks.
That's why it's so important to teach kids the importance of paw washing. Good hygiene can lessen their chances of getting contagious diseases like strep pharynx.
How Is Strep Throat Diagnosed?
If your kid has a sore pharynx and other strep throat symptoms, call your doctor. The doctor will likely practice a rapid strep test in the office, using a cotton wool swab to accept a sample of the fluids at the back of the throat. The examination only takes about 5 minutes.
If it's positive, your kid has strep pharynx. If it'due south negative, the doctor will send a sample to a lab for a pharynx civilisation. The results are unremarkably bachelor inside a few days.
How Is Strep Throat Treated?
Doctors ordinarily prescribe about 10 days of antibody medicine to treat strep throat. Inside nigh 24 hours afterward starting on antibiotics, your kid probably won't have a fever and won't be contagious. By the second or third day, other symptoms should start to go abroad.
Fifty-fifty when kids feel better, they should take the antibiotics as prescribed. This is the best style to impale the harmful bacteria. Otherwise, leaner can remain in the pharynx and symptoms can return. Completing all the antibiotics also prevents other health problems that a strep infection can cause, such as rheumatic fever (which tin crusade heart damage), scarlet fever, blood infections, or kidney affliction.
To prevent spreading strep throat to others in your habitation:
- Go on your child'south eating utensils, dishes, and drinking spectacles dissever and wash them in hot, soapy h2o after each use.
- Brand sure your child doesn't share nutrient, drinks, napkins, handkerchiefs, or towels with other family unit members.
- Teach your child to embrace all sneezes or coughs. If a tissue isn't handy, kids should sneeze or cough into a shirtsleeve, not their easily.
- Remind everyone to wash their hands well and often.
- Give your kid a new toothbrush after the antibiotic treatment starts and he or she is no longer contagious.
How Can I Help My Kid Experience Better?
Home care tin assistance your child feel amend while battling strep throat. Requite enough of liquids to prevent dehydration, such as water or ginger ale, specially if he or she has had a fever. Avert orange juice, grapefruit juice, lemonade, or other acidic beverages, which can irritate a sore throat. Warm liquids like soups, sweetened tea, or hot chocolate can exist soothing.
Talk to your doc nearly when your child can render to normal activities. Most kids tin go back to school when they've taken antibiotics for at to the lowest degree 24 hours and no longer have a fever.
Date reviewed: September 2017
Source: https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/strep-throat.html
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