Abstract
Often it is difficult to differentiate disease-related fever from overheating in the newborn. This study was undertaken to establish the relationship between rectal temperature (RT) and peripheral skin temperature in the normal and overheated term infant, and to compare it with that relationship in infants with fevers that were known to be disease related.
Forty-three two-day-old normal infants were studied. Initial RT was found to be between 96.6 and 99.5°F. Each infant was then placed in an incubator. Ambient temperatures were selected in such a manner as to maintain RT between 98.0 and 99.6°F. Incubator temperatures were raised or lowered in small increments allowing 15 minutes equilibration at each setting. After equilibration, RT and anterior mid-lower leg skin temperature (LT) were recorded simultaneously. One-hundred and twenty paired RT's and LT's were obtained. Plotting LT against RT yielded a correlation coefficient of +0.68. No infant with a rectal temperature ≥99.0° F had greater than a 4.0°F difference between RT and LT.
LT's were also measured in 7 infants with fevers known to be disease-related. RT-LT difference ranged between 6.5 and 12.9°F. This difference is significantly above the highest RT-LT difference recorded in normal infants with RT's ≥99.0°F (p<0.05). These findings confirm observations by others that in the presence of disease-related fever, extremities feel relatively cool.
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Pomerance, J., Meredith, J., Brand, R. et al. 1013 DIFFERENTIATING DISEASE-RELATED FROM ENVIRONMENTAL FEVER IN THE NEWBORN. Pediatr Res 12 (Suppl 4), 532 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197804001-01019
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197804001-01019