Hacker News Reader

Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

When we had our newborn we were surprised to find that many of the expensive infrared thermometers can be quite inaccurate compared to a simple $10 probe thermometer you stick under an armpit.

My mother-in-law is a nurse and they all use the cheap Omron probe thermometers.

View on HN

Most doctors ask for an anal probe temp for newborns before they ask you to bring them in. The armpit method gets significantly harder when they get older, more clothes, fussy, etc. I got a Braun Thermoscan 7 and it’s worth every penny. Makes it super straight forward to get an accurate temp when they’re sleeping. Also since it has a disposable sleeve, you don’t have to wash the thermometer after every use like under the tongue. You can keep using the same one the whole length of the sickness.

I asked my doctor about this when our first was born. He said it’s a baby not a soufflé. An approximate temperature is all we need to get a sense of the general trend of a fever.

Our cheap Braun ear thermometer has been wonderful even if it’s not super precise.

Sometimes I think there’s a ton of theatre in modern medicine.

> Sometimes I think there’s a ton of theatre in modern medicine.

It's a free market, baby!

If you have to take temperature several times over a week of moderate illness, an approximate measure is enough.

When your baby has 104F temperature in the middle of the night and you are deciding whether to take them to the ER or not, that's when you wish you had forked over for a more expensive and accurate model.

If you’re on that precipice, you should just be going.

ERs have their own risks, particularly catching something new. We tried our best to keep our 26 weekers out of it as much as possible, as even a cold was pretty disastrous in the first couple of years.

I doubt the data supports this mindset (unless there’s some specific pre-existing issue that puts someone at elevated risk). Everyone makes their own choices in trying to be the best parents they can be, and I respect that.

I just don’t think “expensive anal thermometer to protect kids from dangerous hospitals” passes the sniff test for me. I’ll stick with my Ivermectin and Q-ring bracelet.

Assuming you were talking about a Q Ray bracelet, there doesn’t appear to be evidence of it working: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/20...

> I doubt the data supports this mindset

Doubt all you like, it's a thing. "In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that roughly 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections, from all types of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi combined, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year."

ERs are dirty, busy places filled with pathogens. It's not uncommon to share the waiting room or a semi-private room with other patients with unknown conditions throwing up or coughing, with the resulting droplets/areosols in the shared air. Even before COVID, going to one when it's a borderline situation requires a bit of calculus, especially if you're medically complex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital-acquired_infection

> unless there’s some specific pre-existing issue

That'd be the 26 weeker thing I mentioned, yes.

Your comment reads like you’re talking about an anal thermometer, and I was wondering how in the world that doesn’t wake up a sleeping baby. It looks like the Thermoscan 7 is an ear thermometer though, which makes a lot more sense!

It’s got disposable tips and you are only assuming he is indeed using it in ear! I have the same one. I do now wonder if it would work, but I’m not going to try it.

I am pretty skeptical how often it comes back at 98.6 vs 98.5 or 98.7, they have a deadband in there I think.

Is it anal or rectal? I’d always heard the latter.

You use a rectal thermometer to take an anal probe.

Either word is fine. There's no need to be rectal about it.

When I had Covid, my Omron mouth thermometer was reading 103F while every infrared thermometer read my forehead at 99F.

I don't use infrared thermometers anymore.

I'd have started by measuring the inside of your mouth with the infrared, personally.

We’ve tried every thermometer under the sun, and all but the probe models start out inaccurate or quickly crap out. Infrared, temporal probe, etc. One of my biggest parenting pet peeves. We now only do the under-the-tongue method, and only if the good ol’ palm-to-the-forehead thermometer says that something is off. I read a study somewhere that indicated that parents are actually pretty accurate when using that method, so I’m sticking with it, replicable or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com