Infant Fever & Measurement

Forehead Thermometer

IR Ear Thermometer

Digital Thermometer

I decided to blog about this topic due to recent experience with our little princess having her first unexpected fever. A general guideline to when your baby may be in fever. Keep in mind that each and every baby's body temperature differ from one and the other. Parents and pediatrician will be the person to know his/her baby best.

General fever guide (reference from http://www.babycenter.com/0_fever_84.bc):

For 0 - 3 months baby = 38.0 C/100.4 F

For 3 - 6 months baby = 38.3 C/101.1 F

For 6 - 12 months baby = 39.4 C/103.0 F

Being a Mechanical Thermal Engineer, it my nature to be very particular with consistent measurement. To achieve consistency in measurement, one must have the correct tool and technique. Commonly available commercial body temperature measurement in the market are IR ear thermometer(RM200), forehead thermometer(RM10) and digital thermometer(RM??) as shown in the pictures above.

The quickiest temperature readout you can get is through IR Ear Thermometer, the one i have is about 1 sec. the only problem is temperature readout varies due to ear canal alignment, at limited times, measurement is from the ear drum while often it is from the ear's side wall. Why? only if you can keep your baby's head still during measurement or else it will be a hit and miss deal. i usually take a few readings and on both ears. This measurement will not gaurantee you accuracy, which beats the entire purpose - get to know if your baby is having a fever or not. Speaking from my perspective, cautious parents will be bias, out of ten measurements only one exceeds 37.5°C, often will be convience that the baby is having fever. So the question comes back is this the correct tool? or is measurement method wrong? One thing to take note is IR ear thermometer needs regular cleaning, bacteria from one ear can transmit to the other so don't just wipe, use Isoropyl alcohol wipe to avoid unnecessary ear infection.

Forehead thermometer offers simplicity, cheap and most likely will not annoy/distract baby. Just put it and apply slight pressure on the forehead for contact and will soon see a temperature gradient appears on the bottom of the numbers. Very simple and yet very coarse measurement. As you can see from the fever chart reference, one requires an accuracy of single decimal or more to know if baby is having fever. This type of thermometer will not tell novice parents anything but more worries/uncertainties. Again this tool requires cleaning too, not to avoid forehead infection....LOL but merely a sense of good hygienic practice.

Digital thermometer, a more conventional yet provides flexibility and most important of all accurate readings. The cons is slow in getting a steady state reading. This measurement tool can snug right under baby's armpit, underneath the tongue or even rectal. I am not a doctor so i don't have the BKM (best known method) for rectal measurement. Kindly consult your pediatrician for details. The average waiting time when used in the arm pit is 5 ~ 10 minutes. Yes its a long wait and its something your baby don't have - patience. Again proper sanitation is needed to aviod any unexpected infection.

Most of the country including Malaysia are already an IT industry, people get to know more and more through the usefulness of internet. at times information can be a bad thing when not properly management and channel through. For this instance, baby's temperature measurement, already there is many tools that can take temperature but may not be giving the right read out. Factor in methodology, it can be a hassle/confuse to many young parents. The more tools we have the more we have to calibrate among each measurement, more uncertainties we have. So how to take advantage on all these information we have? Most of us will do endless web search and reading and at the end of the day perceive and make the judgement call. a wrong one then our precious love one willbe at risk.

i'll take several repeatition measurement not only when your baby is not feeling well but also when your baby is healthy, while sleeping, excercising/playing and even meal time. The 1 sec IR ear thermometer would be handy at these moments. this may sound stupid and over exagerated, but knowing your baby's temperature is important, but more importantly is you know your equipment well base on a reference. the reference is your baby's normal/healthy temperature. this is one way to calibrate any offset (if any) based on the datum that you are comfortable and non bias with.