RESUMO
Background@#Worldwide, diarrhea is a common disease in children and is a problem that causes many children to become sick and die. Diarrhea is found to be the leading cause of death of children under 5 years of age, with 700,000 cases per year worldwide. The incidence of diarrhea is increasing in Laos.@*Objective@#To study oral rehydration and intravenous fluid therapy in children under 5 years of age with acute diarrhea with some dehydration in the Emergency Department of the Children’s Hospital, Vientiane, Lao PDR.@*Methodology@#This was cross-sectional descriptive study; data were collected by using questionnaire interview by doctors. The data entered by Epi-data with analysis by SPSS.@*Results@#Among 90 participants it was found that anxiety or irritability, sunken eyes, nausea, vomiting and flatulence were statistically significantly associated with outcome of treatment (p-value <0.05). More than half of the patients are male (52.2%), aged between 1-2 years and most (83.3%) had normal BMI values. In addition, 44.4% had a history of diarrhea for 2 days with 4 to 5 times a day in 34.4% and stools were watery in 57.8%. A number of participants (47.8%) had a history of previous diarrhea before the current illness and most of them had had it 3 times a year (41.9%). When comparing between oral rehydration and intravenous fluid therapy it was found that the children had no symptoms of anxiety or irritable (in 97.8% vs 77.8%), children with sunken eyes (in 91.1% vs 71.1%), children with vomiting (in 100% vs 64.4%) and children with flatulence (in 97.8% vs 80.0%). Excessive thirst and decreased skin turgor were not statistically different between before and after rehydration therapy (p-value >0.05).@*Conclusion@#The outcome of treatment with intravenous fluids was better than oral rehydration since former decreased vomiting, shortened hospital stays, lowered the costs and increase more parents ‘satisfaction. The oral dehydration therapy often increased the symptoms of flatulence.