Study objective:
A study was undertaken to re-evaluate tympanic temperatures using a commonly used portable infrared tympanic thermometer.
Design:
Temperatures were recorded sequentially at two body sites using an electronic digital thermometer and an infrared tympanic thermometer. the tympanic thermometer was set to the core equivalency setting.
Setting:
The emergency department of a level 2 trauma center.
Type of participants:
Seventy-nine pediatric patients presenting to the ed.
Measurements and main results:
Mean temperatures in the tympanic and rectal temperature groups were 38.5 +/- 1.08 c and 38.8 +/- 1.02 c, respectively (p greater than .05). the overall correlation of rectal and tympanic temperatures was 0.93 (p much less than .001). stratifying the data by age resulted in a weakened correlation for patients 3 months of age and younger. for all strata, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the tympanic thermometer for predicting fever were 96.6%, 100%, 100%, and 90.1%, respectively; for patients more than 3 months of age, the values were 100% in all categories.
Conclusion:
Our findings indicate that the first temp infrared tympanic thermometer accurately detected fever in a pediatric population more than 3 months old. results were inconclusive in patients less than 3 months old.