stomatitis

Stomatitis, or viral stomatitis, is a common infection in kids - usually between ages one to two years or so. The child will typically run a fair amount of fever, drool quite a bit, and will be very uncomfortable. You may see some sores on the tongue as your first clue, or perhaps sores around the mouth. There are three main causes that I can think of:

the Herpes labialis virus (cold sore virus), and which tends to produce the sores towards the front of the mouth, lips and tongue
another herpes-related virus that tends to affect the rear of the mouth around the tonsils (called Herpangina but inexplicably not caused by the Herpes virus but by a related herpes-type bug called Coxsackie virus)
the stomatitis of hand-foot-mouth syndrome

None of these infections are really very treatable beyond symptom relief at present. You theoretically could paint Baby Oragel® or prescription viscous lidocaine on the ulcers for pain relief... theoretically. Just try that with an upset two year old! There may be some antiviral systemic treatments approved for children soon but for now we just have to wait it out. There really isn't anything good and safe (the magic combo with kids) for the pain, which can be very bad. "Canker sores" - aphthous stomatitis or aphthous ulcers - are something of a different syndrome; they are not generally as dramatic and aren&/39;t generally thought of as being associated with fever. They just appear one day. This disease is perhaps viral in origin but nobody really knows.

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