Continue your usual activities if you are mildly ill with diarrhea. Children with frequent stools, fever, or vomiting should stay home from school and daycare until these symptoms go away. In addition to allowing the child to rest and recover, this also helps prevent other children from becoming ill. Stool cultures are not usually necessary unless there is high fever, blood in the stool, recent travel, prolonged disease, or certain unusual situations. It usually takes 1-2 days for results of these tests.
Blood tests are sometimes necessary for people with other medical problems or with severe disease.
Salt solutions flow through the IV, which replaces the lost fluids and often brings quick relief. The doctor will consider a number of factors in deciding whether antibiotics will help someone with acute diarrhea. Because viruses cause most cases of diarrhea, antibiotics will not work. Even the more severe diarrhea caused by bacteria will usually resolve in a few days even without antibiotics. In fact, antibiotics appear to make some bacterial diarrhea worse, specifically those caused by the E coli bacterium.