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A Plea for Restraint

Mark J. DiNubile, MD

Arch Intern Med. 1993;153(22):2525-2526.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

IN THEIR classic description of unexplained fevers, Petersdorf and Beeson¹ defined fever of unknown origin (FUO) as an illness of at least 3 weeks' duration whose cause could not be determined after inpatient evaluation. This syndrome has fascinated clinicians and is periodically reviewed (with special attention to its causes) in prestigious medical journals.^1-10 The entity has also been adapted to the economic realities of contemporary health care; consequently, the workup is now routinely accomplished outside the hospital.^7-9

The definition of classic FUO excludes short-lived febrile illnesses; in fact, the duration criterion was proposed primarily to eliminate self-limited diseases, such as common viral respiratory tract infections, which are difficult to diagnose precisely and/or have little therapeutic impact.¹

A more frequent but less precisely defined entity is new fever in a hospitalized patient for which the cause is not immediately apparent. This syndrome might be termed acute FUO . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Camden, NJ

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