This guideline covers the assessment and early management of fever with no obvious cause in children aged under 5. It aims to improve clinical assessment and help healthcare professionals diagnose serious illness among young children who present with fever in primary and secondary care.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- thermometers and the detection of fever
- clinical assessment of children with fever
- management by remote assessment
- management by non-paediatric practitioners
- management by paediatric specialists
- antipyretic interventions
- advice for home care
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Parents and carers of children under 5 with feverish illness
Is this guideline up to date?
We reviewed the evidence in February 2015. We found nothing new that affects the recommendations in this guideline.
Next review: December 2016
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces NICE guideline CG47 (May 2007).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.