Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about recurrent infections in children.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at Zero to Finals.com slash recurrent infections

or in the Immunology section of the Zero to to finals pediatrics book. So let's get

straight into it. It can be difficult to know when to investigate further for recurrent infections

in children. It's normal for a healthy child to have four to eight respiratory infections per year.

When children start nursery or school, or during the winter months,

they are very likely to pick up recurrent infections.

Most children who have recurrent infections have a normal immune system.

Other features associated with recurrent infections

may make you consider investigating further

for immunodeficiency or other pathology.

Children with these features should be referred to a specialist for further assessment.

And these features are chronic diarrhea since infancy, failure to thrive,

appearing unusually well when they have a severe infection, for example, a febrile with a large pneumonia, having significantly more

infections than expected, particularly bacterial lower respiratory tract infections, and having unusual or persistent infections

such as cytomegalovirus, candida, and numicistice-Giorevecchi. Let's talk about investigations.

The choice of investigations in a child with recurrent infections will be guided by a full history and examination.

When you perform a full blood count, abnormalities such as a low neutrophil count may suggest a phagocytic disorder

or a low lymphocyte count may suggest a T-cell disorder.

When you check immunoglobulins, abnormalities may suggest a T-cell disorder. When you check immunoglobulins, abnormalities may suggest

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