Are you overlooking oral rehydration therapy in childhood diarrhea?

PREVIEW

In 1978, Lancet declared that development of effective oral rehydration solutions might prove to be the most important medical advance of the century. Since then, according to estimates of the World Health Organization, use of the solutions has saved a million children a year worldwide. Why, then, has this method of treating diarrhea-induced dehydration been so overlooked in the United States, where several hundred children still die annually of effects of diarrhea? One reason, the authors believe, is that physicians in developed countries have only limited exposure to serious dehydration and so are poorly informed on the principles of intervention. The authors provide practical advice on assessing dehydration in children, providing initial and maintenance rehydration, and reinstituting feeding.