Pediatric infectious disease

Because children may be unable or unwilling to describe their symptoms, a diagnosis must often be based on clinical signs and laboratory and imaging studies. We offer a number of pointers that can be helpful in avoiding misdiagnosis or in narrowing down the differential in common pediatric clinical scenarios that may involve infectious disease. For example, after a dog or cat bite, the timing of pain onset may point you toward identification of the infecting organism. We also try to dispel some commonly held but inaccurate beliefs; for example, that head lice or the mites that cause scabies are often passed via fomites.