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Summer ideal time to get back to ORT basics

There's no time like summertime to implement oral rehydration therapy (ORT) in your practice. With summer diarrheal diseases requiring appropriate therapy, pediatricians have the opportunity to save their patients from exposure to intravenous needles by implementing oral rehydration in appropriate situations. Best of all, parents can participate in this straightforward, low-tech approach to dealing with gastrointestinal fluid loss.

An ORT symposium held last fall at Johns Hopkins University, cosponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics and others, resulted in this consensus statement on the treatment of diarrheal disease. ORT should be the mainstay of treatment for diarrhea regardless of the patient's age or etiology, and we must insist that our residency training programs teach the value of this technique so that each new pediatrician becomes an ORT advocate.