Diagnosis and Treatment of Baby Skin Rash
As baby's skin rash is usually a symptom of another disease, it lasts until causes are identified and the disease is treated. Therefore, it is important to call your baby's paediatrician and help him identify the underl ying condition, and remember that any unusual sign may be of significance.
In particular, your paediatrician may focus on an eventual family history of food allergies and on your baby's occasional exposure to irritants or infections. He may also specifically enquire on your baby 's rash origins, and ask questions on:
- The beginning of the skin rash, how and when began, if after eating a new food item or after using a new lotion or medication.
These types of questions aim to establish a connection with a food or drug allergen. In addition, while allergic rash lasts until the end of the allergenic exposure, infectious rashes can last for a particular period of time.
- Which part of the body is affected by the rash and how the rash appears.
Some diseases have different rash patterns and show different types of patches.
Hence, you may need to know the answers to:
- When did the rash begin? Which parts of the body are affected? Did the rash spread to other part s of the body?
- Has the rash changed? Did anything make the rash better or worse?
- Did your baby eat anything new or unusual recently ?
- Did your baby use any medicine, product (soaps, shampoos, lotions) or new toys recently?
- Has your baby been in wooded areas recently? Did you notice any tick or insect bite on his skin?
- Did your baby display other symptoms, like itching, scaling, burning, stinging, tingling, numbness, pain, tenderness to the touch, fever, cold symptoms, or diarrhoea?
If required, your paediatrician may prescribe several tests. The typical test for allergies is the Patch test, a skin test in which tiny amounts of various chemicals are placed onto the skin for a couple of days to see if an allergic rash develops.
Other rash tests include blood tests, to check the presence of viruses and bacteria or the presence of autoimmunity, the Wood's lamp test, a ultraviolet light that can help evidence certain chemicals produced by some micro-organisms, the Tzanck test, a test performed on a sample of scratched skin from the rash blisters which helps identify herpes or chicken pox infection, the KOH test, in which a scraped skin is treated with a salt that evidences eventual fungal infections, and the skin biopsy.
Treatment of Skin Rash
Sometimes, ice can be useful to relieve, but not to treat, the itching and swelling. Indeed, for food allergy induced skin rash, there is no cure and, once the allergenic food type has been identified, prevention – whereby the offending food and all its derivatives are avoided - is the only treatment. After the allergenic food has been identified accurately and avoided, the recovery usually is fast and complete.
Particular care should be taken to avoid cross-contamination between foods, so the allergenic food should not come in contact with others, which may result in an allergic reaction.
Always remember that a severe allergic reaction can be triggered due to an anaphylactic shock, a life-threatening medical emergency that must be treated immediately with epinephrine, a medication that opens airways narrowed by the shock, and dangerously raises low blood pressure. Therefore, seek immediate medical advice if your child begins to have difficulty breathing or develops hives, fever, a fast pulse, confusion or nausea. These could be signs of a life-threatening allergic reaction.
Source: Medline Plus Medical Encyclopedia