The Burden Of Visits For Fever At A Paediatric Emergency Room: A Retrospective Study On Patients Presenting At The Cantons Hospital Of Fribourg, A Peripheral Public Hospital Of Switzerland

Introduction Fever is the chief complaint of up to one-third of all paediatric office visits in many places. The high number of consultations at our emergency department (ED) led us to hypothesise that this increase was due to febrile paediatric patients with lower urgency seeking medical advice. Methods We retrospectively analysed the number and characteristics of patients 3 months to 5 years of age consulting for a body temperature of 38.5°C or higher during the 6 winter months of 2011–2012. Results Twenty-four percent of all consultations were requested by the patients included in our group. None of the 835 patients had to be hospitalised, 95% of these patients had additional respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms, 36.7% required antibiotic therapy, and 17.6% (laryngitis and lower respiratory tract infection (RTI)) required temporary respiratory support. A total of 56.2% of patients sought advice outside of the normal working hours. Conclusion The majority of patients had fever accompanied by additional symptoms justifying a medical consultation. However, most of these did not require the infrastructure of an ED for their health care problem and probably visited the ED because of the open hours.