A concerned mother brings her 2-year-old daughter to the clinic with the complaint of fever, irritability, and difficulty eating. Based upon what you have learned so far in class, what are possible diagnoses and how would you differentiate between them? Solution In children the symptoms of epiglottitis include fever with chills difficulty swallowing refusing to eat restlessness and irritability. This disease can be diagnosed by observing X-rays and the wind pipe laryngoscopy. The doctors day observed the swollen epiglottis by observing his throat. Blood test also help observed infection ,other immunologic test also help for identifying the antibodies to specific bacteria ore viruses. Epiglottitis maybe misdiagnosed as strep throat. other misdiagnosis include infectious diseases like diphtheria infectious mononucleosis, peritonsillar abscess. An important misleading diagnosis is croup which occurs in younger children having viral prodrome the children with croup has barking cough and rarely appears toxic they also it experience sore throat, dyspnea and vomitings. Epiglottis is very rare disease where as crop is very common epiglottis is caused by haemophilus influenzae type b virus ,croup is caused by parainfluenza, rsv and enteror viruses ,epiglottis is common in between the children 3 to 7 years where as crop is common between 3 months to 3 years. Fever is less in croup disease whereas fever > 39°c is observed in epiglottitis. Croup Is benign where as epiglottitis is potentially critical. Bacterial tracheitis may also mislead epiglottitis diagnosis..