Emma Howard: Hello, I am Emma Howard and I am joined by Dr. Su Laurent, who is a consultant pediatrician at Barnet Hospital in Hertfordshire. Hello Su.
Dr. Su Laurent: Hi, Emma.
Emma Howard: I have a question here from a parent who says their daughter gets a lot of joint pains and sometimes cant do pee which she absolutely loves, what could these be due to, so what do you think of joint pains are related do?
Dr. Su Laurent: Well, joint pains are interesting and they divide really into 2, 1 is the sort that are not worrying at all and they are common and we’ll talk about those in a moment and the others are the sort which parents worry about a sort of arthritis type pains and there is a small group of children, it is unusual who can get a sort of arthritis.
Emma Howard: It’s what we would worry about that, whether it is a small --.
Dr. Su Laurent: Exactly, so how can we tell the difference? Well, the sort of pains where you should be seeing your doctor particularly are the pains when you get when your child is getting redness, swelling, increased heat in the joints. Those pains there is no doubt you should go and see a doctor and your daughter is going to be put on some tests.
Emma: And you can see those signs for yourself, you can feel the heat coming --side, yeah.
Dr. Su Laurent: You can feel them, you can see them looking swollen, and you can see them looking red. Those are the -- there is no point in telling you on television what to do you just have to go to your doctor and they will probably do a number of different tests trying to workout what it is exactly that’s causing it. But the other sort of pains which are much common are the sort of child who says my joints are really hurting, my knees are hurting and I am finding out upon difficulty doing pee and then you look at them and they look fine and the doctor examines them and they have a got full range of movement and in fact interestingly these children often have more that a full range of movement, they have got hypermobile joints and if you look at how far back puts their arms can go, they kind of bend right back because if you look at how they can get that thumbs back down, they can often get the thumbs right back down on their arms, you often have the sort of knees that kind of go a bit backwards and these children actually have a hypermobile joints and as they are doing that pee they are actually slightly overstretch all the time and then they are getting aching as a result.
The advice I give here is that this will get better in time so that you will stiffen up in time and these pains get better but in the mean time try not to overstretch the joints. So for the person, who is really good at pee, but he is getting a lot of a lot of pain in the joint they may have to just hold back for a while and try not to overstretch their joints.
Emma Howard: Thank you Su, good advice as always. If you have a similar problem we hope we might have given you some help but remember it’s always best to go and see your own doctor for medical advice. Thanks for watching we will be back with more questions and answers.
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