EczemaZones - Patient and Carer Zone

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1. Home
2. What is eczema?
   
   1. What causes eczema?
   2. Why has my child got eczema?
   3. Will my child's eczema get better or go away?
   4. What causes my child's eczema to flare-up?
   5. How do I look out for signs of infection?
3. How treatment works
   
   1. Getting to grips with your child's emollient »
      
      1. Ointments, creams, lotions or gels
      2. Building a daily emollient routine
   2. Using topical steroids with confidence
   3. Other treatments available to your child
   4. Seeing a specialist
4. Living with eczema
   
   1. Supporting your child
   2. Coping with sleep disturbance
5. More info
6. Accessibility

Other treatments available to your child

Many children can control their eczema with a good emollient routine, using topical steroids from time to time when their eczema flares. However, if your child's flare-up is particularly bad or lasts for a long time, there are other treatments you can try. So don't worry about going back to your doctor or nurse to get some additional help.

Whilst a doctor or nurse at your local surgery or practice can prescribe most treatments, there are some which only a specialist healthcare professional can give you, in which case your doctor or nurse might refer you to them. You can find out more about this on our Seeing a specialist page.

What are the options?

• Topical calcineurin inhibitors are treatments that reduce inflammation so they are an alternative to topical steroids for some people. Your child may be prescribed these if topical steroids are not working well enough. Like topical steroids they should only be applied to active eczema (areas of itchy, red, inflamed skin, which may also be broken). If your child has mild eczema or is under two they cannot be given this treatment.
• If your child's eczema is infected, dressings and bandages (on their own or with other treatments) should not be used.
  Dressings and bandages work in three ways: they reduce itchiness, stop children from scratching and stop the skin drying out. You may hear them called dry wraps, wet wraps and occlusive dressings. A member of your healthcare team who is specially trained can supervise and teach you how to apply dressings. Sometimes other treatments (like emollients and topical steroids) will be put on underneath dressings, in which case a specialist will need to show you how to do this.
• Antihistamines are not normally recommended to treat eczema, but if your child's sleep is being disrupted by night time itching your doctor or nurse may want to give you a short course of this treatment.
• Phototherapy is a treatment that involves shining ultraviolet light onto areas of active eczema. This treatment is only available from a specialist.
• Systemic therapy is a name given to treatments that are taken orally (by mouth) and which work on the whole body. Whereas your child's emollient and topical steroid both work on specific areas of the body (this is also called locally). Again, a specialist will need to prescribe one of these treatments if they believe it is necessary for your child.

Seeing a specialist » « Using topical steroids with confidence