What a healthy throat looks like in a child, and what a sore throat looks like?

Being able to identify the symptoms of a healthy throat in your child will help you detect problems early on. When the tonsils are visible, they should be tiny and not swollen, and a normal, healthy throat should be pink. It is simpler to identify the early symptoms of conditions like tonsillitis, strep throat, and colds when you are aware of these indicators.

When a child experiences a sore throat, certain differences become apparent. The tonsils may appear larger and frequently have white or yellow patches, and the throat may appear red or swollen. These alterations may indicate an infection and necessitate medical care.

It’s critical that parents observe their child’s appearance and emotional state. Knowing the fundamental distinctions between a sore and healthy throat will enable you to take prompt action to hasten your child’s recovery and prevent complications.

Symptoms

Kids frequently get sore throats for a variety of reasons, such as allergies or chemical burns, but respiratory viruses are the main culprit. Injuries and bacterial inflammations might also exist.

When a baby exhibits certain symptoms or complains about them out loud, you should examine what’s going on with their throat:

• pain when swallowing;
• difficulty breathing;
• runny nose;
• headache, chills;
• sudden fever, high temperature;
• enlarged submandibular lymph nodes;
• refusal to drink and eat.

How to conduct an examination?

It cannot be deemed an examination if a mother looked down the throat of a child who was making a lazy "a-a-a-a".

The following guidelines apply when inspecting the throat:

• The child should be placed near a window facing the sunny side. If there is no such window or there is not enough natural light, you can use a small flashlight.
• It is clear that not every home has a medical spatula, but everyone has a regular tablespoon. With clean hands, washed with soap, take a clean spoon, pour boiled water over its handle. After this, you no longer need to touch the handle with your hands.
• Use a spoon to gently press on the middle of the tongue. If you press on the tip, you may not see anything. If you press on the root, the child will definitely vomit, since this is the simplest and easiest way to induce a gag reflex.

• The tonsils are most visible, but to assess their condition, you need to ask the child to open his mouth as wide as possible so that the tongue is pressed to the lower lip.
• To assess the condition of the back wall of the larynx, it makes sense to lightly press the tongue with a spatula or spoon.
• The child should breathe through the mouth, taking deep breaths, during which the tongue reflexively drops a little. This makes it much easier to see the area of ​​the tonsils and the lateral parts of the larynx.

You need to know at least the general anatomy of the throat to avoid confusing the pharyngeal tonsil with the palatine tonsil.

Norm

This is how a typical, healthy throat appears:

• There are no visible changes, wounds, ulcers in the oral cavity. The tongue is clean, with little or no physiological coating.
• The tonsils are not enlarged, symmetrical, have a pale pink tint. There is no plaque, bubbles, ulcers, enlarged tubercles with distinct borders and seals on them.
• The palate and palatine arches are pink – sometimes more, sometimes less saturated, but uniform. There is no plaque, abscesses, spots on them.
• The lateral parts of the larynx are normally not swollen, pink.
• The back of the larynx, rich in blood vessels, may be redder, than the rest of the throat, but it is necessary to evaluate exclusively the condition of the vessels – whether they are enlarged, whether there are distinct tubercles, abscesses and plaque.

What does pathology look like?

There are far more visual indicators of sore throats that point to very specific conditions. An accurate diagnosis can only be made by a qualified medical professional and will be based on the results of laboratory tests, the totality of other symptoms, and a throat examination.

However, no parent has ever suffered from knowing the telltale symptoms of throat pathologies. Knowing when to call for an ambulance immediately and when to schedule an appointment at a clinic or make a house call to a doctor is helpful, at the very least.

The tonsils turn a bright red color in the early stages before developing a white coating within a few hours. Abscesses, discrete purulent or necrotic patches, could develop. There could be narrowing of the larynx’s lumen. Neighboring lymph nodes may swell when the tonsils are so inflamed.

Severe intoxication and a high fever are always present with tonsillitis. Follicular tonsillitis, which is easily identified during examination because of a bright sign – loose purulent plaque on the tonsils – may start after the acute period.

View the following video to learn how to diagnose tonsillitis.

• Necrotic tonsillitis characterized by dead gray areas of lymphoid tissue on the tonsils, sometimes the process spreads to the palatine arches and tongue.

• Fungal tonsillitis, is usually accompanied by redness and inflammation of the tonsils, the appearance of visual looseness, as well as a yellowish-green coating. Fungi in the throat are most often related to the genus Candida.

• Pharyngitis is a common childhood disease that quite often begins to develop with a viral disease, with an allergy, with some fungal infections (less often), as well as with a bacterial infection. Almost all types of pharyngitis affect the mucous membrane of the larynx.
• In the simplest form (catarrhal pharyngitis), there is slight redness, as well as slight swelling in the larynx, which does not affect either the tonsils or the palate.
• With a visible increase in the pharyngeal tonsils, pronounced redness and swelling of the larynx itself, we can talk about possible hypertrophic pharyngitis.
• Atrophic pharyngitis associated with atrophy of the mucous membrane, the throat is "varnished", a clear sign is the vessels in the back of the pharynx. They become larger, visually there seem to be fewer of them.

• Granular pharyngitis is easiest to determine: the back wall of the larynx is covered with granules resembling growths in throat. Clusters of mucus may be observed.

• It may arise candidiasis. This disease is also called throat thrush, for the characteristic fungal plaque. The body temperature at white plaque in the larynx rarely rises, complaints about difficulties with swallowing and pain may be, but may not be. The most important visual symptom is a white cheesy coating on the larynx and palate, sometimes on the tonsils. These parts of the larynx can be slightly enlarged, inflamed.

• Adenoids – this is often a childhood disease. It is accompanied by difficulty in nasal breathing, night snoring, and sometimes hearing loss. At home, it is impossible to see the condition of the adenoids due to their anatomical location. After all, the adenoids in the throat are located in the vault of the nasopharynx. To see them, evaluate the size, degree of puffiness, the stage of the disease is capable of only a doctor – using a special mirror, which he can look behind a soft palate.

• Diphtheria. This is an infectious disease in which the oropharynx is most often affected. With diphtheria, the child will have enlarged tonsils, inflamed edematous throat. A characteristic visual sign of the disease is a film raid in the larynx and tonsils. The raid can be extensive, and it can be islands, it is hardly removed by a spatula, and after that red bleeding spots remain. Usually the film has a grayish color. With diphtheria, swelling of the neck can develop, lymph nodes are often inflamed, temperature rises to 38.0-39.0 degrees.

• Laryngitis is accompanied by inflammation of the mucous membrane of the larynx. On examination, severe redness is fixed, as well as the swelling of the throat. Then the redness spreads to the mucous membrane of the epiglottis.

Red dots appear to indicate that blood may leak from the large number of enlarged vessels in the larynx’s back wall. It should be noted that complex flu is also characterized by red dots. A child with laryngitis typically has a dry barking cough that gets worse at night and hoarseness.

• Whooping cough is a contagious bacterial disease that is accompanied by severe coughing fits. Sometimes accompanied by inflammation of the larynx, which is mechanical in nature. With constant severe attacks of suffocating cough, the mucous membrane of the throat is irritated. However, a visual examination of the larynx alone cannot be the basis for making a diagnosis.

• Scarlet fever is very easy to recognize, just by examining the baby"s throat. The most striking sign is the so-called scarlet tongue: in the first days – with a white coating and barely distinguishable bubbles, and then – a rich bright raspberry-scarlet color, with a pronounced granular structure. The tonsils are inflamed, often covered with a rash similar to pimples.

Small sores on the throat may be seen in severe cases of this infectious illness. Additional distinguishing signs of scarlet fever include skin reddening and the development of a rash, with the exception of the nasolabial triangle.

• Laryngeal papillomatosis. This is a benign tumor that can be easily seen in one of the areas of the larynx, if it occurs. Papilloma is rarely single, usually with the disease in the larynx there are several such formations. Quite often they capture the areas of the soft palate, tonsils, and can even appear on the lips. Laryngeal polyps manifest themselves in almost the same way, but they have a smaller area of ​​distribution and are usually more localized.

It’s critical to distinguish between your child’s sore throat and a healthy one in order to catch possible illnesses early. A healthy throat should be smooth, pink, and free of any odd spots or swelling.

Conversely, symptoms of a sore throat include swelling, redness, or the appearance of white patches. In addition to these changes, your child may experience discomfort or difficulty swallowing, which are common signs that they need medical attention.

Parents can feel more comfortable discussing their child’s health and getting prompt medical attention when needed if they know what to look for. In any case, seek medical advice from a professional if you have any doubts about your child’s symptoms.

A child’s throat that is healthy usually looks pink and smooth, with no visible redness or swelling; on the other hand, a sore throat can cause redness, swelling, white patches, or pus, and it can also cause other symptoms like pain or difficulty swallowing. It’s critical that parents understand the differences so they can seek care as soon as necessary.

Video on the topic

How to examine the throat in children.Photos of tonsillitis, pharyngitis, tonsillitis

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