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Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to evaluate the results of tympanic, oral disposable and contactless infrared thermometers measurements.
Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to evaluate the relationship between the tympanic, oral disposable and contactless infrared thermometers measurement values.
Methods: Universe of the study is comprised of students attending medical departments of a university, located in Ankara. Students voluntarily being enrolled in the study were given written informed consent form. 452 individuals’, comprising the sample, body temperature was measured via tympanic, oral disposable and contactless infrared thermometers. Body temperature measurements with different methods were performed by the same researcher at the same room temperature. Eight sequential measurements; once via disposable oral thermometer, twice via tympanic thermometer from each ear, three times via contactless infrared thermometer from forehead region were performed. In order to find out the repetitiveness of results, Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was calculated and to point out the error variance due to high measurements, Bland Altman Graph was utilized. p<0.05 was accepted as statistically significant.
Results: Mean age of healthy young adults participating in the study was 19.66±0.94 and 55.1% of them were female. Mean measured temperature was 36.69±0.59 via disposable oral thermometer, 36.78±0.35 via tympanic thermometer and 36.21±0.18 via contactless infrared thermometer. ICC values of the measurements derived from tympanic and contactless infrared thermometers were, respectively, 0.904 and 0.909 (p<0.01).
Conclusion: Body temperature measurement results of tympanic and oral disposable thermometer are highly consistent and the differentiation between two methods does not increase with the increased temperature. However, consistency of measurement results of contactless infrared thermometer with both oral and tympanic thermometer results is poor and differentiation between results tend to increase with the increased body temperature. Given the fact that tympanic thermometer is highly consistent with oral thermometer and easy to use, it can be noted as an appropriate clinical assessment tool.