Re-evaluation of the tympanic thermometer in the emergency department.

Abstract

A study was undertaken to re-evaluate tympanic temperatures using a commonly used portable infrared tympanic thermometer. 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. The emergency department of a Level 2 trauma center. Seventy-nine pediatric patients presenting to the ED. 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. 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.