Child dehydration diagnostic tool validated

Child dehydration diagnostic tool validated

Image

Nurse Ilishabeth Samadder sees many young
children at the International Centre for
Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh.

A method of diagnosing the severity of dehydration in children has been validated by a team of scientists at Brown University.

As many as 700,000 children die worldwide each year of dehydration, making the quick and accurate diagnostic tool particularly useful in low-resource settings.

Developed in Bangladesh and known as the DHAKA score, diagnosis is based on four symptoms:

• General appearance: is the child restless, irritable, lethargic or unconscious?
• Breathing: is it normal or deep?
• Skin pinch: after a pinch, does skin snap back, respond slowly or very slowly?
• Tears: does the child produce normal volume, less than normal or none?