Description

This video by TV360 offers you expert advice on treating fever in adults and in children and how the treatment differs.

Transcript

How Adult and Child Treatments for Fever Differs Jennifer: Hi, my name is Jennifer and I'm a teacher. I just wanted to know if adults and children should be treated differently when having a fever. Lisa Bernstein: A fever does have different implications whether it's in adults to in a child. In an adult, we really don’t worry so much unless the fever gets up to about 105-106 or if you’ve had a fever for over three days. Adults can fight off infection much better than especially small children such as infants. In adults, you can use really any over-the-counter medication such as ibuprofen or Tylenol to cause the fever to go down. In children, it's very important to remember that normal viruses can actually cause the temperature to be anywhere from 102 to 104 degrees. Although that may be concerning to the parents, it actually doesn’t necessarily indicate that there is any problem other than the body fighting off infection. However, if the temperature gets up higher than that level, or it's there for a sustained period of time or if the child appear lethargic or it's not eating or appears dehydrated , then you definitely want to be concerned and call your physician. The big thing to remember about a child is to never give aspirin to a child who has a fever because there is a risk of causing of something called Reye’s Syndrome which can be very devastating to a child and even cause death.