Symptoms of whooping cough

Whooping cough is a common childhood disease. It mainly refers to the fact that children with the disease keep coughing for several months, so it is called whooping cough. Many children suffer from whooping cough, but because people do not know this disease, they sometimes treat it as another disease. So it will delay the child. So what are the symptoms of whooping cough? Let me tell you about them in detail.

As the name suggests, whooping cough means that children will cough for up to a hundred days. It can be seen that this is a very painful disease for children, so it is necessary to understand this disease in time so that if the child has related symptoms, you will know whether it is whooping cough.

Whooping cough is a common acute respiratory infectious disease in children, and Bordetella pertussis is the causative agent of the disease. It is characterized by paroxysmal spasmodic coughing, accompanied by a special inspiratory roar at the end of the cough. The course of the disease is long, lasting for several weeks or even about 3 months, hence the name whooping cough.

1. The incubation period is generally 7 to 10 days and can be as long as 21 days.

2. The clinical course can be divided into three stages.

(1) The catarrhal stage lasts from the onset of illness to the onset of spasmodic cough, usually about 1 to 2 weeks. The initial symptoms are similar to those of a cold. In addition to coughing, there may be runny nose, sneezing, and mild fever. There may also be only a dry cough that does not attract attention. When other symptoms gradually disappear, the cough becomes worse, becoming lighter during the day and heavier at night, gradually turning into a spasmodic cough.

(2) The spasmodic cough phase generally lasts 2 to 6 weeks (from a few days to more than 2 months). Paroxysmal and spasmodic cough is the characteristic of this period. During an attack, there are frequent and uninterrupted short coughs of more than ten or dozens of times as exhalation, and finally a deep inhalation. Because the throat is still in spasm at this time, it is accompanied by a high-pitched cock-like roar, and then the next spasmodic cough occurs. This attack is repeated many times until thick sputum is coughed up.

3) There are no special circumstances during the intermission period. During spasmodic coughing, the pressure in the superior vena cava increases, the return blood flow to the heart is obstructed and blood stasis occurs. Facial and eyelid edema is common. When the coughing is severe, epistaxis, hemoptysis, subconjunctival hemorrhage, and even intracranial hemorrhage may occur.

Through the above introduction, we can understand that whooping cough is a respiratory disease, which generally has more than just coughing symptoms. Whooping cough often occurs in children and is one of the diseases that parents worry about the most. Once it occurs, it is best to go to a professional hospital for regular treatment to avoid causing other diseases.