Scarlet fever in a child: symptoms, forms, complications

Scarlet fever is an infectious acute disease characterized by a small-point rash, fever and inflammation of the tonsils. Subject to it are mostly 2-7-year-old children.

Scarlet fever in a child : etiology

The causative agent of the disease is streptococcus, which penetrates the body and is fixed in the tonsils. Hence, tonsillitis as the primary manifestation of the disease. In the blood gets erythrogenic toxin, which causes the main symptoms of scarlet fever, and sometimes the pathogen itself, which causes purulent foci. The nature of the disease depends on which of these components prevails.

Scarlet fever: symptoms

The photo shows well what changes occur on the child's face during illness. The skin of the cheeks is hyperemic, it seems that it is a solid red spot. However, upon close examination, it can be seen that this has merged into a single whole small-scale rash. Only the nasolabial triangle characteristically remains pale. In the first days of infection from a sick person to a healthy person, scarlet fever can cross. The incubation period lasts from one day to twelve, but on average takes five days. The disease begins sharply: with a sharp temperature jump, nausea, chills, vomiting, sore throat. Listening reveals tachycardia, and examination - hyperemia of mucous throat. Already by the end of the first day, the rash described above appears. In addition to the face, it affects the chest, neck, folds of the hands, the inner thighs, the lower abdomen. The rash lasts about a week. After a complete disappearance on the feet and on the hands, the skin begins to peel off. The tongue is covered with a plaque for two days, and the third becomes crimson with protruding papillae.

Scarlet fever in a child : clinical forms

The disease can proceed as easily as it is extremely difficult. With the erased forms of scarlet fever, all the signs are expressed hardly noticeably and quickly pass. The subfebrile temperature lasts no longer than three days. The rash is pale and also disappears quickly, with no scaling after it. Almost does not change the picture of peripheral blood. The severe form of scarlet fever is of the following types:

1. Toxic. This form of the disease begins violently, with a high temperature. Within a few days there is vomiting, delusional condition, convulsions, cyanosis, a drop in blood pressure, severe tachycardia.

2. Septic scarlet fever. It is characterized by the strongest necrotic changes in the throat, expressed by lymphadenitis, the attachment of sinus inflammation, otitis.

3. Toxic-septic form. Includes the symptoms of the first two.

4. Extrabulic scarlet fever. It differs in that the infection does not fall through it through the pharynx, but through the injured ones during childbirth, during the burns or injuries, the skin or mucous membranes.

Scarlet fever in a child : complications

In this disease, they are very common. Complications are early and late. The first develop due to intoxication already at the beginning of the disease. Late complications are observed by the third or fourth week. They are most likely allergic. It is noticed that the better the conditions of hospitalization and the lower the neuropsychological tone of the child, the less the probability of complications. Their nature depends on the age of the patient. So, babies develop lymphadenitis, otitis, pustules appear. Scarlet fever in an older child can be complicated by nephritis, myocarditis, synovitis.