Ruth Flaska is on the front lines of child care. She and other pediatric nurses at Loyola University’s Mulcahy Outpatient Center are often the first ones to talk with parents who are worried about sick children.
About 10 to 15 percent of the calls focus on fevers and related symptoms. Typically, Flaska asks a series of questions — How long has the fever lasted? Have you taken the child’s temperature? Are you using any medications? How frequently are you giving the medication? — then provides some advice on treatment.
The short answer is try acetaminophen first (if you are going to use a drug at all), making sure not to provide more than four doses every 24 hours. One local doctor noted the case of an infant who died after several days of receiving acetaminophen doses every four hours round the clock, or six doses each day.
Ibuprofen might bey valuable as a nighttime medication, or to help break a fever not going down with acetaminophen only.
“We use acetaminophen (the most popular brand name is Tylenol) for fevers greater than 100,” said Flaska, practice manager at the Mulcahy pediatric clinic. “But we remind parents that fever is actually the body’s immune system turning on to fight off viruses and bacteria.”
