Nutritional Management of Pediatric ENT Infections

Abstract

Nutrition is the science that investigates how nutrients and food compounds nourish one’s body and interact with health and disease [1]. Although the relationship between diet and disease occurrence, prevention and treatment have been studied extensively [2], the interaction between nutritional status and ENT infections has been heavily understudied, especially among pediatric populations [3]. Nutritional care should be as specialized as medicine; thus, nutritional management of ENT infections needs to be tailored towards the personalized medical needs of the patients. Healthy and balanced nutrition not only maintains proper growth and development in children, but also decreases the risk of morbidity and mortality [4]. As both health care practitioners and parents become more aware of the impact of nutrition in acute and chronic diseases, it is essential to understand nutrition’s role in managing health and disease risk reduction [5]. Also, since parents feed their children daily, empowering them with the knowledge of a healthy diet would enhance their involvement and confidence in caring for the patients. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the nutritional assessment and treatment to reduce the burden of pediatric ENT infections. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.