Background
Although often considered a benign disease, acute gastroenteritis remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in children around the world, accounting for 1.34 million deaths annually in children younger than 5 years, or roughly 15% of all child deaths.
As the disease severity depends on the degree of fluid loss, accurately assessing dehydration status remains a crucial step in preventing mortality. Luckily, most cases of dehydration in children can be accurately diagnosed by a careful clinical examination and treated with simple, cost-effective measures. Although dehydration technically refers to pure water loss and can be associated with euvolemic or even hypervolemic states in certain pediatric disorders, the term is used throughout this article in its more general sense to mean overall fluid or volume loss due to diarrhea.