Reliability of Infrared Tympanic Thermometry in the Detection of Rectal Fever in Children

摘要: Abstract See related editorial, "What's Hot and What's Not: The Gold Standard for Thermometry in Emergency Medicine." Study objective: Recently published clinical guidelines the management of febrile children are based on studies that used rectal temperature data to stratify risk bacteremia septic complications. Appropriate decisions rely accurate detection categorization fever. Accordingly, this study compared newer infrared tympanic thermometry (ITT) regard. Design: Prospective observational study. Setting: Urban teaching hospital ED with annual census 60,000. Participants: Consecutive 6 months years old who had temperatures measured. Interventions: Triage nurses recorded bilateral ITT temperatures. Temperatures were correlated by Pearson correlation coefficients using paired t tests significance set at P Results: Three hundred seventy patients enrolled mean age was 18.4±11.3 months; boys comprised 56% patients. rectal, 101.0±2.0°F; right membrane, 100.4±1.9°F; left 100.3±1.9°F. membrane significantly lower than readings ( r =.83 .85, respectively). 76% sensitive 92% specific detecting fever 100.4°F or more (positive predictive value, 0.92; negative 0.76). In high fever, only 57% but 98% 0.90; 0.90). Rectal TM differed least 0.5°F 70% patients, 1.0°F 41%, 2.0°F 12%, 3.0°F 3%. Conclusion: Despite statistical between temperatures, modalities may yield different poor sensitivity result clinically important miscategorizations individual Current is presence height be adversely affected if used. [Brennan DF, Falk JL, Rothrock SG, Kerr RB: Reliability children. Ann Emerg Med January 1995;25:21-30.]