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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Grandma Knew, Wash Behind Those Little Ears (Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		Grandma Knew, Wash Behind Those Little Ears (Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2018-01-03 19:53:33
	Description:		Topic intro 21st century pediatricians are getting used to being consulted about child health problems in new and unique ways- via email, by way of video calls, and yes, with texts. So it was the other day when I got a few texts, with photos, about my 9-month-old great nephew's outer ear and scalp. These texts were sent by my niece, the baby's mother. Her son had developed some redness behind his ear that looked angry to his mom. Interestingly, the previous week, both his six-year-old brother and mother came down with culture proven strep throat. Very interesting, now little Elliott has a skin infection behind his ear. Could they be related, my niece asked? And my answer was... you bet they're related. Which brings us to today's pedcast topic-skin infections in children. Specifically we are going to address the following questions: Why do children get more skin infections than adults? Are there different kinds of skin infections in children and if so, how are they classified? What are the best treatments for common skin infections in children? Can skin infections be prevented? And, was there a reason that Grandma insisted that her children wash behind their ears? So sit back and take a listen to today's pedcast that I call, "Grandma Knew, Wash Behind Those Little Ears". Musical intro Why do kids get skin infections? Let's start with the first question, why do children get more skin infections than adults. If you think of your skin as a barrier to the germy outside world, the answer becomes obvious. Any situations that break that barrier and introduce germs to a broken outer protective layer of skin, you, know, the epidermis of the skin, increases the chance that the child will develop a skin infection. Remember, kids are different than adults in a number of ways: they have thinner skin than adults that is easily torn, they are much more active than adults making injuries more likely, they definitely have more abrasions and cuts than adults because they move way more, they hang out with children who carry lots of mean germs making inoculation of their broken skin more likely, and they are just dirtier. Their fingers are in their noses, in the trash and dirt, and scratching dirty parts of their bodies far more than adults. All of these factors increase a child's chance of contracting a skin infection. What germs cause most skin infections? Which germs are most likely to infect a child's skin you may be wondering? It turns out that two nasty germs account for almost all the skin infections in children and their names are probably familiar to you...staph aureus and streptococcus pyogenes. Yes the same strep that causes so much misery in the form of strep throat in children. Both are bacteria that have the ability to latch onto broken skin or even invade the skin and tissues below. In very rare cases, they even make it into the child's blood and cause overwhelming life threatening illness. Fortunately, this is rare. Usually staph and strep infections of the skin stay fairly superficial. When strep is the cause of the infection, crusting of the skin is the most common feature, often with a dried honey look. Staph, on the other hand, tends to go deeper faster, causing pustules and boils along with blistering of the skin, the so-called bullous (meaning blister) type of skin infection. To be complete, I should mention that there are viruses and fungi that can infect skin but these types of infections are much less common. Staph and strep are the big bad players when it comes to skin infections. How are skin infections classified? Now we are going to talk about how doctors classify skin infection but to do so, we are going to get a little more technical. I'm going to teach you some doctor speak. Impetigo, or infantigo as some people call it, refers to a condition where the very surface layer of the skin becomes infected... you know, the epidermis. Actually,
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