Johns Hopkins pediatric gastroenterologist Dr. Richard Katz says parents who are concerned that their child may have this disease need to pay careful attention. These can last from one to four days with periodic and repetitive vomiting. The children will often have excessive drooling, will not be awake or to the parents they don't appear to be conscious but they are conscious. The patients have had episodes occurring repetitively with many days or weeks in between. So to the parents, these are occurring as a fairly normal cycle of things, so that needs to be explained very carefully to any health care provider.
Cyclic vomiting is difficult to diagnose and needs to be treated by a specialist.
Supportive care and medication can often reduce the symptoms.