Pediatric Diarrhea (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Calhoun.

00:02 And today we're gonna talk about pediatric diarrhea.

00:06 In this section, we're gonna cover the definition, the causes, and then the signs and symptoms or cues of pediatric diarrhea.

00:14 So first, let's define it.

00:16 And the first part of diarrhea, which are probably familiar is that it's an increase in frequency and water content of bowel movements.

00:25 So patients are having more than normal, and they're looser or more watery than normal.

00:30 The official definition is that there are more than three stools per day or more than normal stools for age.

00:39 And then diarrhea is often accompanied by either vomiting or just more frequent gastric emptying.

00:45 So the whole and digestion process is sped up.

00:49 So let's talk about the causes.

00:52 There's two broad types of causes for diarrhea, both infectious and non-infectious.

01:00 So for infectious, there's viruses.

01:02 And the two big viruses we think about are Norovirus and Rotavirus.

01:07 And then, there's bacteria.

01:08 And these include Shigella, Salmonella, and E. Coli.

01:14 And then for non-infectious, there's a bunch of these, but we can think about malabsorption disorders.

01:20 So sometimes patients are eating things that they're not absorbing correctly.

01:25 And they just come right out as diarrhea.

01:29 There might be increased secretion of fluid by the intestinal mucosa.

01:33 So the intestine itself is adding more water to the stool than it should.

01:37 The intestine might be affected by hypermotility.

01:41 So it's literally just digesting faster than normal.

01:45 The patient might have inflammatory bowel disease.

01:48 They may be taking a medication that causes the side effect of diarrhea, They may be having an increased osmotic load, so they may have formula that's too concentrated or maybe they're drinking a lot of juice that has a high sugar level that's causing the body to put more water into those bowel movements than normal.

02:09 Or they might be receiving radiation therapy, which can also cause the patient to have diarrhea.

02:14 There is also chronic diarrhea.

02:16 So if patients may have it just one time is acute, the chronic is something that's repeated over a longer period of time, there can be certain digestive tract infections that can cause diarrhea over a long time.

02:32 They may have celiac disease, which is a specific type of malabsorption disorder where patients just don't process or break down gluten properly.

02:44 They may have a functional gastrointestinal, or GI disorder, and this is where their body just really can't digest things normally.

02:52 They may have a food allergy, particularly lactose can cause diarrhea.

02:59 They may have inflammatory bowel disease, like we said in that non infectious cause.

03:03 And the two main types of this are either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.

03:09 And then lastly, they might have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

03:13 Our intestines always have bacteria in them, we need those bacteria.

03:17 That's half of what digests our food.

03:20 But if you have too much of certain types of bacteria, that can actually be harmful, and it can lead to diarrhea.

03:30 There are a few other causes of pediatric diarrhea.

03:33 And one of those other types is recent travel to places where certain microbes are known to be plentiful.

03:41 And this is usually somewhere far away from where a patient lives because they don't have a tolerance to that microbe like someone living in an area might have.

03:51 And then use of antibiotics.

03:54 So we talked about the definition. We talked about the causes.

03:58 And let's talk about the cues or the signs and symptoms.

04:03 Aside from just the frequency of bowel movements themselves, the patient might experience abdominal cramping.

04:10 They might have abdominal pain.

04:13 They might have hyperactive bowel sounds or sensations.

04:16 And sometimes these can even be loud enough.

04:17 You don't need to hear them with a stethoscope, or you can even feel them if you're palpate in a patient's abdomen.

04:25 And they may have an urgency to go just because that intestines working so hard, and the patient really needs to get to the toilet as soon as possible.

04:33 So let's review those cues and kind of put it all together at the end of this lecture.

04:38 So the patient, to have diarrhea, they need to be having more than three stools per day.

04:43 Those stools are loose or liquid and quality.

04:48 The stools may or may not have blood in them.

04:52 They may smell bad or be malodorous.

04:56 They may contain mucus depending on the cause.

05:00 And they may also look greasy, depending on the cause.

05:04 So thanks for going over this video with me.

05:06 I'm glad you watched it. And we'll see you next time.