Investigating the bacterial causes of fever in 2-month to 14-year-old febrile children admitted to Afzalipour Hospital of Kerman

Fever is one of the most common reasons for admission to the emergency department, especially at the age of under 3 years. In some cases, there are no localizing clinical signs in febrile children, and in some cases, children suffer from bacteremia, which has severe consequences. The present study aims to investigate the cause of bacteremia in 2-month to 14-year-old febrile children without any other clinical symptoms.

The present study was carried out on 2-month to 168-month-old children hospitalized due to non-localizing fever in the pediatric wards of Afzalipour Hospital in Kerman. The blood samples of the patients were sent to the hospital laboratory in a BACTEC culture medium, and the interpretation of the results was expressed as sensitivity and resistance to antibiotics.

In this study, 93 children were investigated, 62 of which were male, and 31 (33.3%) were female. Their mean age was 3 years, and the mean hospitalization time was 5 days. Also, 18.3% had an underlying disease, and 37.6% had a history of receiving antibiotics. Additionally, 26.9% had a positive blood culture, 6.5% had a positive urine culture, and 3.2% had positive CSF cultures. Based on this study's results, bacteremia's prevalence differs in different regions and times. Our patients' most common diagnosis was pneumonia, followed by pyelonephritis. The most common causes of bacteremia were pneumococcus, Klebsiella, and Staph epidermidis. One of the limitations of our study is the negative blood culture in a great number of the patients, which may be due to the history of previous antibiotic use or other causes. In general, a quick diagnosis of bacterial infection in febrile children can be helpful in prognosis and selecting an appropriate antibiotic. Also, lack of diagnosis causes serious complications, and unnecessary treatment causes antibiotic resistance.