What are the symptoms of whooping cough in children?
What are the symptoms of whooping cough?
The illness usually follows a pattern.
- At first there is a mild, dry cough, and often a mild fever (high temperature).
- After 4-10 days the cough gets worse and becomes 'paroxysmal'. This means there are bouts or 'paoxysms' of intense coughing.
During a bout of coughing, you repeatedly cough out. The face often goes red and the body becomes tense. Eventually, there is a desperate attempt to breathe in which can cause a 'whooping' sound. Some children may stop breathing at the end of a bout of coughing and go blue for a short time before they start breathing again.
Several coughing bouts may occur together and last several minutes.
It is common to vomit at the end of a bout of coughing.
Between the bouts of coughing there is often no other coughing, and you may appear quite well if you have no complications.
The number of coughing bouts per day varies from case to case. You may only have a few bouts each day, but some people have up to 100 bouts per day. The average is about 12-15 bouts per day.
- The bouts of coughing usually last at least 2 weeks, often longer. The coughing bouts then ease gradually over a period which can last up to 3 months or more. (In some countries whooping cough is known as 'the cough of a 100 days'.) As things seem to be easing, you may still get the odd bout of severe coughing.
Whooping cough can be very miserable as the coughing bouts can be quite distressing. Although most cases occur in children, whooping cough is not just a childhood illness. Adults can also get this illness, especially if they are not immunised.
In some cases the symptoms are milder than described above. There may be just intermittent bouts of coughing which are not too bad without any 'whooping' or vomiting.
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