Situation: A mother brings her young son into the Pediatric Outpatient Clinic fo
ID: 40226 • Letter: S
Question
Situation: A mother brings her young son into the Pediatric Outpatient Clinic for assessment of some recent allergic reactions that the child has been having to food he is eating, most especially peanuts. You are the Nurse Practitioner who is gathering the "new patient" information regarding these allergic reactions. In the course of your conversation with the mother, she states that her son has not eaten anything new that he hasn't eaten before, so she doesn't understand why her son has this new allergy. In trying to educate the mother about allergies, what do you tell her?
Explanation / Answer
The child must be prone to peanut allergy. The symptoms of peanut can range from mild to severe life threatening anaphylaxis. On consuming less quantity of peanut earlier the symptoms might have been milder like itchy skin, nausea, cough, red spots etc. Hence the allergic condition would have been unnoticed might be due to lack of knowledge to parents regarding this allergy on earlier consumption.
Now the consumption of large quantity of peanut would have lead to overreaction of the immune system against proteins present in peanuts recognizing them as harmful invaders. This results in production of histamines which initiate allergic reactions. This can leads to severe symptoms like swollen lips, itchy or watery eyes, constricted airway causing breathlessness, swollen throat, vomiting, diarrhea, stomache, drop in blood pressure leading to anaphylaxis.
Immediate medical emergency care, administration of antihistamines and epinephrine or adrenaline injections will reduce allergic symtoms and gradually restore the condition of the child back to normal.
To prevent such allergic reactions in future parents should take care that the child should avoid in take of food containing peanuts.