Host: How should I respond if my child suffers an insect bite or sting?

Robin Vick: Insect Bites, to start with, a kid is bound to have a mosquito bite or maybe a bee sting. In either instance, the child's immediate reaction to that bite is going to determine how you proceed. If the stinger for bee sting remains in the bite itself, the child needs to be seen by the physician. If there is anything more than just a tiny little, no bigger than this bump where the bee sting or insect bite occurred, the child should immediately be seen by the doctor's office. The progression of the bite is what is concerning to us.

Insects have the ability to inject allergens into the body and children and adults can develop quite rapidly, accelerating allergic responses to an insect bite. A parent should seek immediate attention if the child begins to show heat, redness, spreading of the area where the bite has occurred. Hives, hives are blotches that appear on the skin, that are the body's response to the allergens that have occurred in the insect bite.

The worry here is that we are witnessing a progression of an allergic response that can go from a topical one on the outside to an internal one; where the child begins to develop histamines on the inside that can impede their respirations and can impede their cardiac functioning. So any insect bite that progresses beyond just a tiny pin point of a dot where the bite was, deserves immediate action by the parent.

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