When parents see their child with a fever and cough, they associate it with a serious bacterial infection and pneumonia,which is reasonable. But the reality is that medicine is a profession with high professional barriers, as well as treatment of illnesses should be left to professional doctors. Decisions based on fears are not accurate.
Literally, current research concludes that acute bronchitis is primarily caused by viral infections,while confirms that antibiotics have no therapeutic effect on the disease. Naturally the guidelines do not recommend antibiotics for children with acute bronchitis, just as they do not recommend antibiotics for patients with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia.
Again, some parents argue that although most acute bronchitis caused by viral infection, what if it is combined with a bacterial infection or secondary bacterial pneumonia?However, it is clearly inappropriate to act blindly based on fear alone.
Probabilistically, the vast majority of infectious diseases in children are caused by viral infections, and evidence needs to be sought for small probability events-such as a combination of serious infections. For example, the clinical manifestations of bacterial pneumonia are usually accompanied by recurrent fever ,respiratory distress in addition to cough, as well as with rales in the lungs on auscultation, while with chest radiographs and CT imaging performance.
In contrast, bacterial bronchitis is very rare. When antibiotics are used blindly with none of these conditions, on the one hand, it will not help to recovery, and on the other hand, it will not only fail to prevent pneumonia from occurring but also induce such adverse reactions as allergies and diarrhea.
To sum up, antibiotics are not recommended for acute bronchitis in children, and they should not be applied blindly and prophylactically to relieve parents' worries.
