PEDIATRICS Vol. 90 No. 4 October 1992, pp. 649
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Temperature Measurement—Gold Standard

MARTIN E. WEISSE MD1

1 Department of Pediatrics, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, El Paso, Texas 79920

To the Editor.—

I would like to comment on the article by Freed and Fraley in the March 1992 issue of Pediatrics.1 I have no argument with their study design and in fact applaud them for using Altman and Bland's method of analysis. Their conclusions, as written, are correct, that the tympanic thermometer "is unreliable compared with conventional methods of temperature determination." The three issues that I would like to raise are: (1) the relative accuracy of rectal and tympanic temperatures in predicting core temperature, (2) rectal temperature as the "gold standard," and (3) axillary thermometry as an acceptable conventional method of clinical temperature.