What does body temperature mean?
Body temperature is an important indication of the human body status. The average body temperature is around 37 °C (98.6 °F) and it varies from one individual to another.
It also tends to vary in the course of the day: lower in the morning and higher in the evening. For these reasons, it is important to learn your family member’s typical temperature when they are well, in order to establish a reference baseline for monitoring their body temperature from time to time. A change in body temperature is an indication of an extraordinary happening within the human body.
What technologies are used for taking temperature?
A reliable determination of body temperature is a critical indication when coming to evaluate a person’s well being and monitoring the response to a given treatment.
Measuring temperature accurately and reliably may be obtained using traditional glass thermometers, based on heat conduction principal, which compromises the speed and thus the convenience of measurement (10-12 minutes). In the marketplace one can find also the electronic prediction type thermometers, based on the heat conduction principal as well, and providing limited accuracy readouts within (30-90 seconds) by using mathematical estimation of the measured temperature. Obtaining very fast temperature readings (1-2 seconds) may be achieved, compromising accuracy, using IR radiation reading (Infra red) based devices, applied in the ear canal or on the forehead.
R.A.T.E.™, conduction based technology, is an advancement in comparison with the existing technologies described above as it provides instant (4-7 seconds) readouts with the accuracy of a glass thermometer. When ill, infants and young children are often subject to volatile fluctuations in body temperature, thus, only technology that provides accurate and reliable temperature readings fulfills this sector’s needs.
How is Mothers’Touch different than forehead thermometers?
Mother’sTouch is powered by the patented R.A.T.E. technology, which is a conductive forehead thermometer. This is the same technology that powers the best-selling TempleTouch thermometers. It measures heat flow under the skin surface near the temple, where as other popular forehead thermometers measure the temperature of the skin surface, making them subject to more variability.
What are the differences between measurements in different body locations?
Measuring locations that are considered to be reliable: Temple or Forehead, Axilar (under the arm), Oral (under the tongue), and Rectal.
Due to the body temperature regulation and different tissue structure it is clinically accepted that there may be up to 0.5-1.5 °C differences between the measurements in the different locations. Learning one’s typical temperature at any of these locations is necessary for effective body temperature monitoring. Clinical references show that the average difference between Under Arm measurement and Rectal measurement is 0.9°C. Moreover, this difference is smaller when the measured person is healthy and it may increase when body temperature rises. Oral measurement may be 0.5°C lower than Rectal measurement. When measuring Orally, placing the thermometer’s probe in the heat pocket, next to the lower molar teeth is essential for accuracy. Differences in readings may vary as much as 0.9°C from the rear sublingual heat pocket to beneath the tongue in front of the floor of the mouth.
Another reason for temperature variance between body locations is because the Rectum fails to track rapid changes in body temperature (such as after taking medication for bringing the fever down etc.) and may take up to an hour until the temperature fluctuations are noticed in rectal measurement. In the mouth or axilla, changes are noticed faster.
What is the difference between Technical and Clinical accuracy?
It is common to distinguish between the technical accuracy of the thermometer itself and the clinical accuracy in use in taking a temperature.
Technical accuracy is a term used to describe accuracy established within idealized laboratory conditions. The technical accuracy of ±0.1°C is considered high for quality thermometers. Clinical accuracy is a term describing accuracy assessment based on study done in humans, using mercury in glass thermometers as a reference measurement to the tested devices.
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