Suddenly the toddler seems a little out of sorts; her eyes are glittering and she has the ruddy flush and feel of fever. No matter how familiar a sight, it can cause anxiety in the most reasonable parents.
Yet physicians worry that many parents have become fever phobic, obsessed with controlling fevers because of their misconceptions about the nature of elevated temperatures. Several local doctors say fever should be viewed as a sign of an underlying illness, not as a disease itself. They also point to studies suggesting that fever is the body's natural way of fighting infection.
A 1989 report in the American Journal of Pediatrics, for instance, showed that children with chicken pox who were given acetaminophen (Tylenol) to reduce their fevers often took a half-day longer to recover than those who didn't, says Timothy F. Doran, a Baltimore pediatrician and one of the authors of the study.
Dr. Doran blames the medical profession for furthering the notion that fever itself is dangerous: "As soon as you go to the emergency room, they stick the thermometer in your mouth. Not until the last 10 years have we gotten a better understanding of the physiology of fever. We need to help parents understand that it's not the fever that's dangerous, it's whatever is causing it.
"Parents should be more worried about the appearance and attitude of their sick children than about the height of their fevers. I'm less concerned about a child with a temperature of 105 who's playing around and active than one who has a temperature of 101 and is lethargic."
In infants, fevers should cause concern, physicians say. Parents should always consult a pediatrician if the feverish child is less than 2 months old because fevers in that age group often point to serious bacterial infections, which can be treated with medication. For children, temperatures under 100 are not considered fevers.
Common illnesses such as ear infections can provoke high fevers that often catch parents by surprise, doctors say.
"A temperature of 105 is not unusual in such normal childhood illnesses as strep throat, chicken pox, normal childhood viruses and roseola -- and those aren't necessarily serious illnesses," says Dr. Jean Ogborn, instructor of pediatric emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "Herpetic stomatitis, or mouth blisters, can also give you high fevers."
