• Utku Karaarslan, Hurşit Apa, Salih Gözmen, Nuri Bayram, Asl Catkoğlu, Fatma Devrim, Ilker Günay, Nurettin Unal, Ilker Devrim, Asl Çatkoğlu, İlker Günay, Nurettin Ünal, and İlker Devrim.
• From the *Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Behçet Uz Children's Hospital; †Department of Pediatric Hematology, Dokuz Eylül University Hospital; and Departments of ‡Pediatrics and §Pediatric Intensive Care, Behçet Uz Children's Hospital, İzmir, Turkey.
• Pediatr Emerg Care. 2013 Sep 1;29(9):992-7.

IntroductionThe aim of this study was to compare the body temperature measurements of infrared tympanic and forehead noncontact thermometers with the axillary digital thermometer.MethodsRandomly selected 50 pediatric patients who were hospitalized in Dr Behcet Uz Children's Training and Research Hospital, Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit, between March 2012 and September 2012 were included in the study. Body temperature measurements were performed using an axillary thermometer (Microlife MT 3001), a tympanic thermometer (Microlife Ear Thermometer IR 100), and a noncontact thermometer (ThermoFlash LX-26).ResultsFifty patients participated in this study. We performed 1639 temperature readings for every method. The average difference between the mean (SD) of both axillary and tympanic temperatures was -0.20°C (0.61°C) (95% confidence interval, -1.41°C to 1.00°C). The average difference between the mean (SD) of both axillary and forehead temperatures was -0.38 (0.55°C) (95% confidence interval, -1.47°C to 0.70°C). The Bland-Altman plot showed that most of the data points were tightly clustered around the zero line of the difference between the 2 temperature readings. With the use of the axillary method as the criterion standard, positive likelihood ratios were 17.9 and 16.5 and negative likelihood ratios were 0.2 and 0.4 for tympanic and forehead measurements, respectively.DiscussionThe results demonstrated that the infrared tympanic thermometer could be a good option in the measurement of fever in the pediatric population. The noncontact infrared thermometer is very useful for the screening of fever in the pediatric population, but it must be used with caution because it has a high value of bias.

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