Clinical features in paediatrics

Most of the clinical features listed here have a counterpart in adult medicine, but many are specific to paediatrics.

Perhaps one of the most important facts to remember is that the younger the child, the smaller the repertoire of responses to illness that child has. Thus features which in the adult may be quite precise and well defined are much more nebulous in the young child, and may point to a far greater range of pathology.

Always in children an index of suspicion must be maintained for Munchausen by proxy, ie factitious symptoms produced by a parent, most often the mother.