“My son's fever won't subside. What should we do?”
My son has had a fever for the past 2 days. We took him to the doctor the moment it happened, and they diagnosed him with strep. But, he's on antibiotics and nothing is happening. What should we do? Do the antibiotics take time to kick in or should we take him to the emergency room?
4 Answers
The fever can help kill the bacteria and can take 3 days to fully keep the fever down. How is he acting? If he is unable to drink fluids or is listless he will need to be rechecked.
Likely to have a virus and I recommend not treating fever. Fever is harmless and will help child to recover more quickly. It is typical for children to have mild viral disease that will cause a fever for 3 days followed by a rash. Many people are concerned about fever seizures. These are harmless and cannot be avoided by aggressive attempts to control fever
Fever typically lasts 3-5 days in most infections with the highest temperature on day 3, this is especially true in VIRAL infections. Depending on the age of your child, strep swabs can be positive due to being a carrier and not active infection. So it may be that your child has a viral infection and the antibiotics will make no difference to the course of fever or symptoms.
If your child has a strep infection and he had a throat culture and he is on amoxicillin or cephalexin, he should have improved after 2 days. Unless he is given ineffective antibiotics like Zithromax. This antibiotic is frequently prescribed by urgent care physicians and should not prescribed for the treatment of strep throat. Zithromax has an FDA black box warning.
