QuestionI'm an American living in Croatia. A friend's daughter had a fever of 38-39 degC for a couple of days. Medicine helped lower the temp, but only temporarily. Her doctor then took a blood test to check for leukocytes (I think). My friend said this is ROUTINE when a kid has a fever for a couple of days here. They put my friend's child in the hospital for a week to do more tests. They never identified the cause of the fever, except perhaps UTI because they found bacteria in her urine. I thought all the testing seemed unnecessary and they still don't know for sure what caused the fever. This has happened to 2 other kids I know here. They hospitalized them because they had a high number of leuckocytes in their blood, but they never found any bacteria except in the urine, so they concluded that they had UTI. One of these kids also had diarrhea.
Am I missing something here? Can you explain why they do routine blood tests for fever? Should I ask my private pediatrician to do it whenever my kids have a fever? Or is this all old-school practices that don't really help? Because we live an hour away from our private doctor, we rarely take our kids unless they are obviously very sick. We usually just relieve the cold symptoms ourselves. Please enlighten me.
AnswerAm I missing something here? Probably not, it is the standard of care there.
Can you explain why they do routine blood tests for fever?
To determine if it is a bacterial infection or viral.
Should I ask my private pediatrician to do it whenever my kids have a fever? Yes, if it gets high or prolonged
Or is this all old-school practices that don't really help? No, I do this for most of my patients who want to be really healthy
Because we live an hour away from our private doctor, we rarely take our kids unless they are obviously very sick. We usually just relieve the cold symptoms ourselves.
Probably OK as long as they do not get really sick.
