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Pinkeye

Many children will experience a common illness known as pinkeye (correct medical term is conjunctivitis). It is highly contagious and spreads very quickly through schools, daycares, and households. There are only a few things that you can do to help your child prevent catching it, but once they have it, it is important to know what you should do to make it as easy for your child as possible.

Symptoms—
Pinkeye gets is common name because of its appearance, meaning that the most noticeable symptom is a pink eye. This may also include a fluid discharge from the eyes that will often form a crust around the lining of the eye (as well as in the lashes of the eye).

Prevention—
The real only way to try to prevent your child from catching pinkeye is to have them wash their hands as frequently as possible. Pinkeye is caught from an infected child spreading it to other children, most often on the hands, and then the child will wipe their eyes leading to pinkeye. If your child seems to catch pinkeye quite often, you should speak to their pediatrician and have them tested for allergies because this can cause frequent cases of pinkeye. The only way to avoid this is to get the allergies under control first. Then, your child likely won’t have pinkeye near as often. One cause of pinkeye can be environmental factors, such as smoke. If this seems to be the case with your child, most often if you eliminate the factor that is causing it, the result will be no more pinkeye.
Also, once your child has caught pinkeye, it is important to try to prevent the rest of the household from catching it. You should not only have all children and adults wash their hands frequently, there should be no sharing of towels or washrags. Everything, such as sheets and pillows, that comes in contact with your child’s face and hands should be washed as soon as possible to keep the infection not only from spreading, but also from reoccurring in your child.

Treatment—
What type of treatment will be necessary will depend highly on how your child contracted pinkeye to start with. as mentioned above, if it was an environmental factor, eliminating that should be the only treatment necessary, aside from eye drops or cream to lessen the irritation until it heals. If it is allergies, treating the allergies will also treat the pinkeye. If it is an infection, treatment will depend on whether the infection is bacterial or viral. If a virus caused the infection, the doctor may prescribe a cream or liquid drops for the eyes, but the treatment of the actual infection will be to let it run its course. This may take one or two weeks and will likely include the same type of symptoms as with the common cold (sore throat, runny nose, etc.). If the pinkeye was caused by a bacterial infection, your doctor will likely prescribe an antibiotic along with any ointments or creams.

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