Introduction Most Cases of acute diarrhea subside by 7 days. However, some cases last up to 14 days. Persistent diarrhea or chronic diarrhea are defined when the duration of diarrhea lasts for more than two weeks. WHO estimates that while persistent diarrhea accounts for only 10 percent of diarrheal episodes, as much as 35 percent of deaths from diarrhea in children under 5 years of age occur from it. The major causes and the prevalence of persistent diarrhea differ between developed and developing countries. In the developing world, persistent diarrhea is usually followed by an acute episode and is associated with serial enteric infections without time to recover between episodes.1Gibbons T, Fuchs GJ. Chronic enteropathy: clinical aspects. Nestle Nutr Workshop Ser Pediatr Program 2007; 59:89. 2Bhandari N, Bhan MK, Sazawal S, et al. Association of antecedent malnutrition with persistent diarrhoea: a case-control study. BMJ 1989; 298:1284. In developed countries, a wide…
Introduction The symptom of abdominal pain in childhood is very common. More than one-third of elementary and middle school children complain of weekly abdominal pain. Children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) and their families often suffer with this frustrating situation. However, the majority of children with RAP (almost 90%) do not have a serious disease.1Campo JV. Functional Recurrent Abdominal Pain in Children and Adolescents. International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD). Recurrent abdominal pain was first described in 1958,2Plunkett A, Beattie RM. J R Soc Med 2005; 98:101-6. and is considered as a symptom and not a diagnosis. The seminal work of Apley and Naish, who studied 1000 school children in Bristol, England, used a pragmatic definition of recurrent abdominal pain as, '3 episodes over 3 months, severe enough to affect daily activity'.3Bremner AR, Sandhu BK. Indian Pediatr 2009;46: 375-9. Prevalence In Apley's original study, the prevalence of recurrent abdominal…
