Ateneo de Zamboanga University

College of Nursing

Title: A case study on a normal pediatric patient with recurrent fever

I. Introduction:

In the lives of parents of young children, hearing "My child has a high temperature" is not

uncommon. Children are more likely to get a fever than adults. One of the most frequent

reasons that results in parents to take their kids to the doctor or the hospital is fever.

Fever is a very common presentation of a wide variety of illnesses and is defined as an

increase in body temperature over normal (37.9 °C). Acute fever is typically brought on by

simple bacterial illnesses and viral infections, and it usually goes away in a week or less. Fever

may occasionally become prolonged after varying periods of apyrexia; these situations are more

serious.

A recurring fever is a fever that happens multiple times over a period of time. These

fevers can sometimes be described as episodic, meaning that they come and go. A pattern of

recurrence characterizes a recurrent fever. For instance, a toddler or young child may experience

a fever each month. Young children are often affected by this sort of fever. The elevated

temperature appears for a few days before disappearing completely. The child is healthy and acts

normally in between fevers. (Cleveland Clinic medical professional on 10/20/2020)

Although it happens frequently, representing 18%–42% of fevers of unknown origin in

adults and 69% of recent pediatric cases, recurrent fever is not well defined. In 1993, Knockaert

et al. defined recurrent fever as a cyclical fever with apparent illness remission and fever-free
intervals of at least two weeks. Other authors required a minimum of three unexplained fever

periods in a six-month period, with a minimum interval of seven days between each episode; in

other studies, the minimum interval was only 48 hours. In some cases, fever was considered

recurrent if it consisted of multiple febrile episodes separated by an undefined interval of normal

temperature.

According to a study by the PFAPA/Auto-inflammatory Disease Working Group of the

Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), recurrent fevers in children

may be more common than previously thought and may have delayed receiving early medical

attention prior to the pandemic because they are linked to common childhood infections. Patients'

experiences at 27 locations across North America were evaluated by the researchers. According

to their research, the proportion of pediatric patients with recurring fevers increased from 7.79%

prior to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak to 10.9%.

According to a related study conducted in March 2016 by Sofia Torreggiani, Giovanni

Filocamo, and Susanna Esposito, most children with recurrent fever have self-limited, common

illnesses because of their physiological vulnerability to infections common to children's age

groups. In the least cases, the cause of recurrent fever is a more rare disease that requires second

line investigation and specific treatment.

This study focuses on the causes of the recurrent fever of an 8-year old boy from Sta.

Maria as a subject for a group of second-year nursing students of Ateneno de Zamboanga

University. The causes of the recurrent fever of the client will be the center of the case

study, in which the health status of the client will be examined and analyzed thoroughly

from his lifestyle to environment. All the while, the nursing students will incorporate
 concepts and principles they have learned from the nursing care management courses

they have taken.

For the past few weeks the students have been conducting a thorough study regarding

nursing considerations and management for children. During the students’ rotation on September

5, 2023, at Dr. Brillantes Street, Sta.Maria, Zamboanga City, simple nursing intervention had

been done by the students in order to get the current condition and the health history of the client.

Upon assessment the mother the mentioned that the child received complete vaccination thus she

wondered why her child still often gets a fever. As nursing students, we want to find out the

causes of the fever the client has been experiencing considering he lives in a squatter area where

disease is prevalent.