Study Questions Efficacy of Popular Forehead Thermometer

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"The specific concern we had expressed to them two years ago was that they were using the temporal artery thermometer in a manner for which it was not designed and contrary to the manufacturer's instructions ... It was not that they were doing heat stress studies, but that they were conducting them with artificial heating and cooling apparatus, which greatly distorts the thermophysiology of either a patient or an athlete, to the point of little meaning as a laboratory model for actual patients or athletes," Pompei said in a statement.

Frederick Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, said the study was "very interesting," but noted it involved a very small number of subjects, and so must be repeated with a larger population. He also suggested the authors might have seen different results if they had measured temperature after exercise-induced heating, rather than by artificially raising body temperature with a water suit.

The Exergen temporal thermometer is available in versions for both medical professionals and consumers. About one in three Texas hospitals uses them, as does the medical tent at the Boston Marathon. According to a list provided by Exergen, customers include such institutions as Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, and New York University Medical Center.

However, there have been few reports to validate their efficacy, according to the study authors, and those that have been published describe conflicting findings.

The Texas study arose after a temporal thermometer failed to recognize a fever of 40 degrees C in a patient at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, a woman with a severe but undiagnosed infection, explained study co-author Dr. Benjamin Levine.

"I investigated it in our hospital, and it turned out many of the nurses had the same experience," he said. "In other words, they [the nurses] thought there was a fever, and a temporal measurement said they didn't."