Supralingual Temperatures Compared to Tympanic and Rectal Temperatures

Objective: To evaluate the validity, reliability, sensitivity, and specificity of the PaciTemp supralingual digital pacifier thermometer as compared to the Thermoscan Instant tympanic and glass-mercury rectal thermometers.

Method: Eighty-one children under the age of 2 years had temperatures taken sequentially at three body sites: supralingual, tympanic, and rectal. Corrections were calculated between the readings of the three types of thermometers. Percentage of agreement was done to examine sensitivity and specificity.

Results: Using the glass-mercury measurement as the standard, both the supralingual and tympanic measurements showed an overall specificity of 62.8% and sensitivity of 63.3%. Correlation between rectal and supralingual was 0.62, and correlation between rectal and tympanic was 0.71.

Conclusions: The Paci-Temp provides temperature readings that are similar to the tympanic method as compared to the rectal method. Further research on at-home thermometers is needed.