About Pediatric Colitis Symptoms

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. David Hill and today we're going to be talking about symptoms of pediatric colitis. Now colitis is a very general term, it describes really, any inflammation that involves the colon. Some of that maybe infectious, in fact the most common colitis in children today is an infection caused by an organism called Clostridium Difficile. This organism sets up sharp off and when a child's been on antibiotics, they kill the protective bacteria. So if your child finishes a course of antibiotics and starts having blood in his stool, high fevers or diarrhea that just won't go away. He definitely should be evaluated, again. Some children will get C. Difficile without having them on antibiotics, that's becoming increasingly common. But most parents know that if the, have, the child has blood in the stool or severe diarrhea or pain, he deserves an evaluation. Other types of colitis are not caused by infection. We think of Crohn's disease and we think of Ulcerative colitis. And there's a few in between that we call Indeterminate Colitis, because we really can't lump them in one group or in the other. Ulcerative colitis presents very much like the Clostridium Difficile, potentially with bleeding in the stool, diarrhea, maybe some abdominal pain. You might also see sores or fissures at the child's anus. The trick is, for one to diagnose, is Crohn's disease, which affects about five out of every ten thousand children. Crohn's disease usually presents in the teen years but it can present as early as the first year of life. It can present anywhere along the digestive tract, as far up as the mouth, where you may see sores. It can present with complete blockage or partial blockage of the small intestine, leading to pain and vomiting. It can also cause the same symptoms in the colon, a thing you might see with the other colitises. But colitis disease is so difficult to diagnose. It sometimes takes doctors quite a bit of work to find out why a child is having fever, abdominal pain, weight loss or other symptoms that are often difficult to explain. The key is, if your child has symptoms like these, somebody needs to be looking at him or her. Evaluating the cause and trying to get to the bottom of it. Colitis can be pretty tricky to diagnose and so you want to be looking hard and thinking about it. Talking about symptoms of pediatric colitis, I'm Dr. David Hill."