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The renewed discussion and debate on the subject of fever of unknown origin (FUO) have brought me some discomfort after reading the article of Vanderschueren et al¹ and accompanying editorial by Bryan.² I believe that in this age of advanced medical science, the use of the term FUO should have been eliminated years ago. The term FUO sometimes tends to shortcut the need of thorough evaluation for a patient as if this were a real disease. The proposed diagnostic criteria of FUO are imprecise and arbitrary at best, and the evaluation methods applied to every patient to reach the diagnosis are not uniform. As seen in the article by Vanderschueren et al,¹ the cause was identified in a large number of cases, although extensive evaluation, which may have a different meaning from one physician to another and from one time to another, might have required more than 3 to 4 . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Jae C. Chang, MD
Orange, Calif

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