Updates in Management of New Fever in ICU Patients

Abstract

Introduction: Fever frequently occurs in critically ill patients. Although fever is primarily a symptom of infection, it also occurs as a host's response to non-infectious inflammatory stimulus. It complicates up to 70% of all intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and is often due to an infection or another serious condition. For all patients, all ICU temperature values during the entire ICU admissions were available. Measurement methods included pulmonary artery thermistor, tympanic, axillary, per rectum, esophageal and bladder temperature probes. Fever was defined as a body temperature >38.0°C. Aims: The aim of this work is to study different causes of new fevers in intensive care unit (ICU) and to discuss the management of infectious and non-infectious cases of it in the ICU. Summary: Fever is a characteristic feature of most infections but is also found in a number of noninfectious diseases such as autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. Also there is methods available to induce therapeutic hypothermia in a variety of clinical settings: (1) surface cooling d (2) core cooling. The corner stone in management of fever is accurate diagnosis and treatment of underlying etiologies.