Abdominal Pain

Recurrent tummy pain in children is very uncommonly organic. Worth doing FBC and coeluac antibody and if these are normal , then in an otherwise healthy child whonis thriving and has red flag symptoms is likely to be functional.

yes we see this a lot in children. It is important we rule out coeliac disease so we will do the blood test after your child has had a high gluten diet for 4 weeks. In children where coeliac is ruled out the pain does not reflect any harm or damage to the bowels and will settle though it can take some months. It may have been triggered by a tummy bug which has since passed but the nerves continue to remember the pain. Things like stress or mild food intolerance may be keeping the pain going, so while it is important to check for any stress, it’s usually not worth looking at good intolerances as there is no good test and it is more annoying to children to be told they cannot have certain foods. This intolerance is almost always temporary and though it may be causing symptoms is not causing pain. It’s better to focus on healthy diet including foods like yoghurt that contain good bacteria. Most children and young people when reassured that there is nothing worrying going on, given healthy diet and have any stress reduced will feel better in 3 to 6 months without medication or food avoidanc