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Bacterial vs. Viral Infections
What's the Difference Between Bacterial and Viral Infections in Babies?
By Shannon McKelden
There is some danger in mistreating bacteria as a viral infection and vice versa.
"If you treat a viral infection as if it were bacterial, there is no great harm to that specific patient," Dr. Rogers says. Most people these days are aware, though, that using antibiotics unnecessarily (to treat a viral infection, which would be ineffective), increases the number of resistant bacterial strains in the population, possibly making these infections more difficult to treat.
On the other hand, treating a bacterial infection, such as bacterial meningitis, as it if were viral (meaning withholding antibiotics) could prove deadly. Thus it is imperative to have your doctor investigate.
"Often, because few effective therapies do exist for viral infections, infants with symptoms of an infection are treated with antibiotics while tests are being processed to figure out if the infection is caused by a virus or by a bacteria," Dr. Dalton says. "The risks of assuming the infection is a viral infection and not using antibiotics would be possibly not treating a bacterial infection and having the symptoms continue or get worse."
Being a well-informed parent is important, though. Lisa Chaplin, currently living in Merishausen, Switzerland, found that knowing the difference between bacterial and viral infections prevented her from givingher child an unnecessary course of antibiotics. "When my daughter had viral pneumonia, the doctor tried to give me antibiotics," she says. Knowing they wouldn't work, she refused them, not wanting to contribute to more antibiotic-resistant infections.
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