Al Sacchetti, MD, FACEP, has seen it countless times: A child presents with a fever. Is it the first sign of some rare and dangerous disease that if untreated will result in a parent’s worst fears?
Or is it just a fever?
Find out at his rapid-fire session “Staying Cool with Pediatric Fever.”
“It’s kind of a microcosm of emergency medicine,” Dr. Sacchetti said. “It’s a very common pediatric presentation that has the potential to mix extremely critically ill children with an entire sea of really well children. The main take-home is that the vast majority of children you’ll see with fevers are going to be relatively well with benign diseases. But it’s important to emphasize that, despite that, you still have to have a high index of suspicion.”
Dr. Sacchetti said that best practices for treating pediatric fever have remained steady in recent years. But he believes that reinforcing those practices is always worthwhile, particularly as he’ll give his talk through the prism of how to handle actual presentations.
“By taking them through the same way they’ll do it in the ED themselves,” he said, “hopefully we’ll be able to either reinforce what they’re already doing or make little tweaks to pull them in line with what’s going on in 2016.”
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