rsv

My wife took our son (6 mos.) to the care center the other day after he has been coughing, sneezing, and with a runny nose for about a week. I didn't know she took him until after I got home from work. But I found out that she was given a nebulizer and prescriptions for him. Now my question is: Why would our pediatrician prescribe him xopenex, pulmicort, and amoxicillin all in the first visit and BEFORE the mucus sample lab test results even came back?

[Darkestlight]

Because obviously he's sick. Xopenex is used to treat and PREVENT bronchospasm in children and adults. Pulmicort is used to prevent and reduce symptoms (wheezing and shortness of breath) caused by asthma.  This medication belongs to a class of drugs known as corticosteroids. It works directly in the lungs to make breathing easier by reducing the irritation and swelling of the airways. Amoxicillin is a antibiotic which a lot of times is used to treat bronchitis along with many other things. Doctors can listen to a patients breathing and usually make a pretty good analysis if they have bronchitis. You should call the pediatrician if you don't like what he's doing and he can answer your questions directly. However your childs quality of life and being able to breath was probably the doctors concern. If a child is sick then the longer you wait to put them on meds the worse they can get and you will end up in the ER. I'm not the doctor so I don't know what he was looking for in the mucus sample test. Call the doctor.

[Crritter]

Did they diagnose him with RSV?  Usually they will have you neb them, but it's a virus and they don't give an antibiotic right away, so it coud very well be something else, like an infection.  Darkestlight is right, they are more concerend with the breathing at that point and will do what they can to help open up the airway regardless of what the tests say, it's pretty common to have to use a nebulizer on a little one, and at 6 months they are still little, but a good size that they can fight off whatever is going on better than a really little one.  Both of my boys have gotten sick early on.  First one got pneumonia from aspirating vomit during a choking episode.  Later he ended up with RSV twice and this started at 11 weeks.  My second little guy got RSV at 10 weeks from daycare and we are still dealing with respitory problems and he will be 5 months next week.  I hope you don't have to deal with RSV, our episodes were very scary and I almost had to hospitalize my second one, we were told we were lucky he was 10 weeks, a week or 2 younger and it could have been way worse.  We were not allowed to leave the office till they got the test results, they did send us to the hospital for more tests and to monitor him, then we got to come back and they monitored him more at the office before they allowed us to go home.  Spent the day there pretty much and it scared the living daylights out of me.  RSV is not common early summer when we got it last time, and really won't be showing up much till the fall, but still possible to get.  We noticed more gagging and coughing and dehydration that quickly turned to choking.  Within 2 days he went from little cough to turning purple he was choking so hard.  If your little one was breathing bad enough to get the pulmicort too on his first visit, be thankful she took the little one in.  It will be fine, just comes with kids.  IT's always best to be safe when it comes to their health and breathing, hope your little guy feels better soon.