Question
My baby is two and a half months old and has phlegm in the throat, along with slight coughing and a runny nose. Sometimes, when feeding, she coughs and chokes on milk. During the two medical visits, the doctors did not recommend taking an X-ray of the chest, but only prescribed medication and diagnosed it as acute bronchitis. I am worried that it might be pneumonia because when she was one month old, she also had phlegm in her throat and we had taken an X-ray at that time. I’ve heard that frequent chest X-rays are bad for babies. What should I do? Can pneumonia be heard during a physical examination of the lungs?
Answer
The simplest way to determine if a baby has pneumonia is to observe the breathing rate and chest wall indentation. For babies under two months old, if they breathe more than or equal to 60 times per minute in a calm state, or if there is a noticeable inward indentation at the lower end of the chest wall during inhalation, this may indicate an increased breathing rate. This is because in the case of pneumonia, babies need to breathe harder than usual. If newborns have both increased breathing rate and significant chest wall indentation, it can be diagnosed as severe pneumonia. If the baby shows symptoms such as difficulty feeding, seizures, decreased appetite, wheezing, fever, or a drop in body temperature, they should be taken to the hospital immediately for confirmation and treatment.