Acute enteritis (gastroenteritis)

For a lay person:

Acute enteritis is a sudden inflammation of the intestines, usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection or contaminated food or water. It causes diarrhoea, stomach cramps and sometimes vomiting and fever, and most people recover within a few days.

For a trained medical person:

Usually infectious gastroenteritis, commonly norovirus or rotavirus, or bacteria such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella and E. coli. Diagnosis is clinical, with stool testing for bloody diarrhoea, prolonged illness, outbreaks or high-risk patients. Management is oral rehydration, with antibiotics only for selected bacterial infections and intravenous fluids for severe dehydration.

In Chinese medicine:

Liu and Tseng's textbook gives Chinese herbal formulas for this condition without a full pattern differentiation. Treatment still follows the pattern a patient presents with, not the Western diagnosis alone.

When to get help: Seek urgent care for signs of dehydration (little urine, dizziness, drowsiness), blood in the stool, severe abdominal pain or high fever, especially in babies, older people and those with weak immune systems.