29.03.2024

Prickly heat in children: symptoms and treatment

In the hot season, and during the heating season, significantly increases the probability of occurrence of redness and rashes in babies. This unpleasant phenomenon, pestering children of younger age, is called heat rash.

Abundant irritation in the area of skin folds and in areas of tight fit clothing due to the violation of the balance of “sweating-evaporation”. Unfortunately, young parents do not always understand the reason for this phenomenon, and therefore, they do not immediately take the necessary steps to resolve this issue.

In this article we try to answer the question: “What is the sweating sickness and what are its treatment?”.

The sweating sickness and the reasons for its occurrence

Miliaria is irritation of the skin that occurs with excessive functioning of sweat glands and slow the evaporation of sweat. Usually, the sweating becomes more intense during hot or humid weather.

With the sweating sickness often experienced by children than adults, and this is due to several structural features of children’s skin:

  • kids have more delicate, sensitive and thin skin than adults;
  • baby skin due to the large number of blood vessels krovosnabjaemah intensively, which leads to failure thermoregulation process. Baby’s skin is very easy to overheat;
  • the sweat ducts in babies is still not developed, so the sweat gets very bad, there are blockage of the sweat glands. It should be noted that the sweat glands in children be fully operational already from three to four weeks after birth, while the ducts are formed for the past five or six years. Therefore, the sweating sickness in a child three years of age is a frequent phenomenon;
  • the skin of young children are saturated with water, up to 90%.

In addition, some kids are more prone to heat rash than others. This group includes kids:

Most often, the rash is bothering such skin kids:

  1. The natural skin folds in the elbow crease, neck, inguinal folds, ears.
  2. The upper part of the body.
  3. Back of the head and skin of the forehead.
  4. Area snug fit of the diaper, namely the buttocks and the waist part over them.
  5. Axilla and inner side of arms and legs.

The occurrence of heat rash can be triggered by both external factors (exogenous) and internal (endogenous).

To external causes of heat rash include:

  1. Improper care of a little late changing diapers, rare water and air baths. If the child is seldom bathed, his skin and creates a favorable environment for bacteria and impaired thermoregulation. And the dust and dead skin cells clog the pores, further endangering the already imperfect performance of the sweat ducts.
  2. Use in hot weather ointments and creams with a large percentage of fat.
  3. Excessive wrapping of the baby. If the child is too warm to wear a broken mechanism of heat transfer: due to the resulting greenhouse effect diaper and clothes comes the sweating sickness.
  4. High temperature and humidity outside or in the room where the baby.

Among the internal factors affecting the appearance of the sweat, you should allocate:

  1. Special structure of children’s skin.
  2. The lack of acidic environment on the skin of the baby, so hit her pathogens can multiply freely.
  3. Not always adequate reaction of the thermoregulatory center to temperature changes in the environment. This is due to its nedozrelye.
  4. The fever in such diseases as SARS, varicella, enterovirus infection and others.

Sweating, and as a consequence of the sweating sickness, can also be a symptom of serious diseases such as rickets and exudative-catarrhal diathesis.

Types of heat rash

Experts distinguish a few types of sweat, which occur on the baby’s skin:

  1. Miliaria crystalline. This species is most common in newborn babies. Its easy to identify by richly “scattered” on the two-millimeter skin bubbles white or pearl color. The individual elements of the rash may merge with each other into larger bubbles. In children with crystal diaper rash generally focused on the neck and upper trunk, whereas in adults, the bubbles can overwhelm the whole body. After about two or three hours after damage to the bubbles (which happens very easily) appear on the skin scaly areas.
  2. Red prickly heat. A rash of this type of heat rash in appearance is a homogeneous elements of a small size with red and swollen skin under them. These bubbles do not merge with each other. They are very itchy and can cause pain when touched. It is noteworthy that the discomfort from the red sweat is significantly increased at high humidity and ambient temperature. Another unpleasant feature of this type of acne is a very long healing period – two to three weeks.
  3. Deep miliaria. Often with this kind of heat rash adults face, informed not once suffered red rash. In appearance the rash resemble bubbles Nude (skin color), the size of which may vary from one to three millimeters. Deep heat rash and appears suddenly, and is very fast, while the rash can also occur on the trunk, but also on the hands and feet.

In running situations to sweat may join a secondary infection, which leads to various kinds of complications:

  • diaper dermatitis;
  • diaper rash;
  • infected microtrauma resulting from scratching the skin;
  • other serious skin diseases.

About the presence of secondary infection of the sweat can indicate the following symptoms:

  1. The increased body temperature.
  2. Severe itching.
  3. Rash change: pop the bubbles with the liquid white or yellow. If this yellow form of bubbles very easily and quickly opened, forming a moist crust.

If regular sweating sickness when performing simple recommendations it is easy to treat at home, with the advent of such complications it is necessary and urgent to seek help from a doctor.

Treatment of heat rash in children

Quality treatment heat rash the child provides for the full elimination of the reason that caused it, and following several simple guidelines:

  1. Daily bathing of the baby. For this you can use ordinary boiled water. Very useful is the children swimming in the water with a decoction of these herbs, as a succession, chamomile, yarrow, or St. John’s wort. However, it is important to remember that some children on the grass may be allergic. To treat heat rash, you should apply once in two days, baths with the addition of a solution of potassium permanganate, which will allow to kill all pathogenic microorganisms on the body of the child.
  2. Clean your baby’s skin, it is recommended to sprinkle talcum powder, with special attention to treat the treatment of wrinkles. Often baby powder may contain:
    • benzocaine, cooling impact to the skin;
    • zinc, which has anti-inflammatory effect;
    • panthenol to promote regeneration and fast healing of damaged skin.
  3. Use disinfectant solutions to lubricate the rash. Quite effective in the treatment of sweating sickness are tools such as: methylene blue, alcohol solution hlorofillipta (1%), solutions of boric or salicylic acid (1-2%).
  4. To power skin, you should use the fellto absorbing creams are water-based. Fat means you need to eliminate completely during the treatment of heat rash in hot weather.
  5. Effective in treating heat rash in children is the use of the following ointments:
    • “Bepanten”. Thanks to the active ingredient (dexpanthenol), which is part of the cream, this tool has a restoring and moisturizing effect on the skin;
    • “Sudocrem”. This drug is also suitable for the treatment of the sweat, but because of the high fat content it should be used with caution, dealing a point to the affected areas. The composition of the cream includes zinc oxide and zinc ointment, which have anti-inflammatory and antibacterial action;
    • the zinc ointment. This is quite a budget option, but not inferior in effectiveness to modern expensive drugs. Ointment contains two components: zinc oxide and vaseline. The first substance has a drying and anti-microbial action, while the second creates a protective film helping to retain moisture.

However, there are times when without the help of a doctor did not do. So, when the little one there has been a deterioration (increased body temperature, the fluid in the vesicles becomes turbid white or yellow) should immediately contact the pediatrician for advice.

As a rule, treatment of heat rash in children doctors spend with antibacterial, antifungal and antihistamines. In addition, often also prescribed and immunomodulatory agent.

Prevention of heat rash in children

To prevent heat rash in a child, parents should direct efforts at addressing the main causes of the problem. Fortunately, preventive measures are quite simple and affordable to implement.

So that the skin of the child was not suffering from heat rash should:

  1. Regularly arrange baby air baths, which are not only effective prevention of the sweat, but also quenched the child’s body, increasing its resistance to diseases of viral or bacterial origin. It should be noted that, since three or four months of age, the child can arrange air baths in the warm season and in the street, should avoid direct sunlight and draughts.
  2. To ensure optimal temperature conditions (around 20 degrees) and humidity level in the baby’s room. It is also important to air the room and make it wet cleaning.
  3. Choose baby clothes made of natural breathable fabrics.
  4. Dress the baby according to the weather conditions.
  5. To give preference to breastfeeding. According to experts, breast milk helps the child to deal successfully with a rash caused by prickly heat.
  6. To perform timely change of diapers and diaper. In addition, it is recommended that as often as possible to keep the baby without diapers, contributing to the creation of the “greenhouse” effect and not allowing the skin to breathe.
  7. Every day to bathe a baby (in winter once daily, and in hot weather – at least twice a day).
  8. To renounce the use of antibacterial wipes for baby care, since they are composed of various chemicals, often causing irritation of the skin.
  9. Wash baby clothes using only hypoallergenic powders, in the composition which are not phosphate-and fragrance-free, and the proportion of aggressive active surfactant is not more than 15%. Among the most popular “safe” powders should be highlighted: Frau Schmidt “Ocean baby”, Regent, Nordland Eco, Ecover.
  10. If you notice even a slight redness on the baby’s skin, you must immediately take appropriate action to address them.
  11. To perform a daily morning toilet of the child, which must include cleaning and processing of talcum powder in all folds (in the hot season).

It is important to remember that regular talc and baby powder can be used only on dry and clean skin of the child.

4 thoughts on “Prickly heat in children: symptoms and treatment

  1. I will be often to blogging and i also really appreciate your content. This content actually peaks my interest. I am about to bookmark your website whilst looking for new information.

  2. Sweating, and as a consequence of the sweating sickness, can also be a symptom of serious diseases such as rickets and exudative-catarrhal diathesis.

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