Comparing tympanic and rectal temperature measurement methods

Monitoring of patient's temperature is an important clinical nursing task. Proper treatment of patients is possible by controlling the body temperature accurately. Body temperature is usually taken at different sites like rectum, month, axillaries and tympanic. Rectal temperature measurement as a less invasive method has been used for a long time. This study was untaken to compare two methods of tympanic and rectal temperature measurement.

A comparative study design was used to recruit a convenient sample of 336 patients in study. They ranged in age from 16 to 85. The tympanic temperatures were measured using the Braun ThermoScan type 6020 and the rectal temperatures were measured by Samsung digital. The measurement accuracy of both thermometers was 0.1ºC, according to those manufactures. Collected data were inserted to SPSS and Medcalc sofwares and analyzed through descriptive statistics, paired t-test, Pearson coefficient, Bland-Altman's analysis, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values. P-value less than 0.05 considered significant.

Using Paired t-test, it was revealed that tympanic and rectal mean temperatures were significantly different (P<0.0001). The Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated that the mean rectal temperatures were 0.23ºC more than the mean of tympanic temperatures, with ranges of agreement between -0.98ºC to 0.51ºC for right tympanic temperatures and the limits of agreement between -0.88ºC to 0.41ºC for left tympanic temperatures. There was also high correlation between right (r=0.88) and left (r= 0.89) tympanic temperatures (P<0.0001).

Despite high correlation between rectal and tympanic temperature, their differences were significant both statistically and clinically. It could be concluded that tympanic temperature cant reflect the rectal temperature with high agreement. Based on the study’s result, tympanic method couldn’t be an excellent alternative for rectal method. However, each of them has special performances, advantages and disadvantages in clinical practice.