What is the cause of dry blood in the child's stool?

Normally, when adults have blood in their stools, most people may not panic, because they always think that blood in the stools of adults is mainly caused by gastrointestinal problems. It is okay to take time to go to the hospital for a check-up. However, when children have dry stools and blood in the stools, parents must pay special attention to whether the dry stools cause anal tearing, causing bleeding, or whether the stool itself is bleeding.

There are two types of blood in the stool: one is blood mixed in the stool, and the other is blood floating on the surface of the stool.

If blood is mixed in the stool, it means that the blood comes from the stool. There are two types of blood in the stool:

Above the rectum, including: stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ileum and colon, etc. If the blood mixed in the stool is bright red, you should consider whether there is vitamin K deficiency (large amount of bleeding, which will lead to hemorrhagic anemia), intussusception (the child must have obvious abdominal pain and cry incessantly), polyps (there will be continuous small amounts of bleeding, which can only be confirmed by special intestinal angiography), and normal metabolic shedding of intestinal mucosa (the child does not have any abnormal symptoms and grows and develops normally), etc. If the blood mixed in the stool is brown, you should consider that the bleeding site is from the stomach. Because the gastric acid in the stomach can destroy the red blood cells, forming a brown color.

If blood floats on the surface of the stool, it means that the bleeding is coming from the rectum or anus. The main causes are dry stools, stenosis of the anus or rectum, and mechanical damage caused during defecation. Since the stool has already formed in the upper part of the rectum, bleeding in the lower part of the rectum can only float on the surface of the stool.

A digital rectal examination by a surgeon can help confirm the diagnosis. If the problem is mild, conservative treatment is used and it will generally improve on its own after a few months; if the problem is more serious, mechanical dilation may be used for treatment; only very serious cases require surgical treatment. But no matter which method is adopted, you should follow the doctor's advice.

If the child still has the same problem when he is 3 to 4 months old, he should be taken to the hospital's surgery department for examination to rule out problems such as intestinal polyps.