Atopic dermatitis in children

How did we handle with  the atopic dermatitis
Everyone dealing with this health problem knows that life's not easy when having skin rash, eczema, poor sleeping, irritability, etc. According to the specialists, the atopic dermatitis is an affection that begins in the early childhood or within the first months of life. Although the doctors say that the progress of this affection is somehow stopped or slown as the child grows older, it is different from case to case. My daughters had it from their first months (one is 2 and the other 6 now), and they still have it, because it never goes away, but the quality of their lives improved as all you can do regarding the atopic dermatitis is to keep it under control. 

There were so many things that I didn't know about concerning this affection. In the beginning, distracted by the overwhelming moments with the first newborn, I overlooked it for a while, as I thought it was a transitory issue. But things proved to be more complicated, as the skin problems were getting worse. My baby was irritated and crying alot, and the skin was looking awful. I was lucky that she couldn't scratch, but, unfortunately, it was bad for her, as I could only imagine how uncomfortable was for a baby to live with that.



There are some features met in this affection:
  • it is a chronic inflammatory affection (with moments of ingravescence alternating with remission) of the skin. 
  • it develops red injuries on the surface of the skin (on face, extremites, and rarely on other parts of the body) with intense itching.
  • it causes irritability, the high risk of the lesions to be infected (as the skin becomes very dry).
  • it is not contagious (which is a positive feature, especially for the kids who will go to the kindergarten later).
  • it occurs more often in children living in the urban environments, and more often in girls.
  • it is supposed to occur as a genetic factor (it could have been present in one parent or brother/sister or grandparent, on the background of an alergic affection).
  • it is closely related to the environment factors: which activate and feed the disease (detergents, whiteners and other cleaning agents; toxins produced by some bacteria, allergens in foods like milk, citrics, chocolate,eggs, peanuts or fruits like strawberries). And the list can continue. 
Healing my children's skin

In our case, the problem was not related to the food allergens, as the pediatrician adviced us (after an accurate examination and diagnosis) to make some more tests to find out a possible source of the affection. After all, we had to find out the cause to treat and heal the effect. So, the immunological tests proved to be negative (and quite expensive, but we've excluded a possibility) and we looked further to find solutions and treatments to repair the skin barrier and to keep the affection under control.

This is what doctors have prescribed us and what really worked for my children:

  1. Creams with cortisone - the most effective as main treatment (used not longer than 7 days); my doctor prescribed me Advantan Milk, a very good cream, used from the first months of life. Using it longer than 7 days could be harmful, as it consists of cortisone, so, the secondary effects could appear.
  2. Creams for skin repairing - after 7 days of using cortisone cream, it was absolutely necessary to use creams for repairing the skin barrier (for us, the most efficient was CICAPLAST from La Roche-Posay
  3. Emollients for bath and daily care - very useful to remove the dryness of the skin; the emollients and eau thermal from Avene were so useful to us. 
  4. Bathing - it was very important to attenuate washing my children's body every day, because this is very important in atopic dermatitis. I observed that doing it more than three times a week could worsen their skin  condition (not to mention that it is very important to remove all the alergenic factors like detergents, whiteners, balms, and other solutions for air refreshing, or house cleaning).
  5. Breastfeeding for at least 6 months according to pediatricians (I don't know if this was the reason the affection has healed at least for a while, but it happened to breastfeed my youngest daughter until 2 years old, and until 7 months the older daughter).
  6. Cotton clothes are important to keep the skin healthy after all the creams and emollients applied, as the children with atopic dermatitis are very sensitive to all the environmental factors.
  7. Breathing air - is also important especially when speaking of moulds or dust mites.  Keeping  the air fresh no matter what season is outside will help children feel more comfortable, having a good sleeping or help them reduce their irritability caused by this affection.
Keeping children healthy will improve the quality of their life, and, implicitly, the quality of family life.