Are kids ever wrongly diagnosed as having head lice? Could the parent on lice patrol, the nurse, or even the doctor be wrong?
Unfortunately there are several situations which are mistakenly diagnosed as head lice even though no head lice are present. 1) The child has so-called fake or pseudo nits rather than real nits. There are two types of commonly found fake or pseudo nits. In one type, the child has dandruff scales which stick together in lumps that can resemble real nits. In the other type, the child has an abnormality in which the adjacent normal skin adheres to the hair shaft, creating a white lump that mimics the appearance of a nit. 2) The child has real nits but they are from a prior infestation. The only way to diagnose an active problem is to find crawling lice. The best way to find lice is to do an LIT. 3) The child has an itchy scalp from dandruff and the scaling is mistaken for lice or nits. The absence of real nits and especially a negative LIT clarifies this situation.
