Monday 23 / December / 2024
Abdominal pain in children can be caused by infections, food poisoning, allergy, and appendicitis. Abdominal pain is pain in the stomach or belly area. It is a common problem in children. About one out of three children is seen by a doctor for abdominal pain by the age of 15 years. Abdominal pain in children is often frightening and frustrating for parents. Most of the times it is not caused by a serious problem, but sometimes it could be serious necessitating urgent medical attention. Abdominal pain in children can be of three broad categories:
1. Sudden and severe onset pain (acute abdominal pain)
2. Long standing intermittent abdominal pain, mostly functional (chronic abdominal pain)
3. Recurrent abdominal pain (pain that waxes and wanes, occurs for at least three episodes within 3 months).
We should be more careful in a child with abdominal pain in certain situations like when there is weight loss, blood in stools, significant vomiting, unexplained fever, persistent pain in the right upper and lower areas of abdomen.
Appendicitis, stones in urinary tract or gall bladder, hernia or twisting, blockage, obstruction of bowels — all these can be serious causes for abdominal pain in children.
Some of the non-life threatening causes of abdominal pain in children are – constipation, food intolerance or food allergies, heart burn/acid reflux, food poisoning, air swallowing in small babies, and a lot more.
Your child may have something serious if the pain does not get better in 24 hours, gets worse or gets more frequent.
In children with long standing abdominal pain, especially school going children, which definitely is a concern for parents, try to avoid certain foods like carbonated drinks, caffeine, citrus, some dairy products, fried foods, high fat foods. Asking children to have lots of water and fibre and inculcating proper toilet training help in alleviating chronic abdominal pain to certain extent. —[email protected]
Dr Sreekumar is a paediatrician at KIMS Oman Hospital
