The study’s goals were to confirm fever rates following paediatric gastrointestinal endoscopy, characterise clinical outcomes of postendoscopy fever (PEF) patients, and evaluate the influence of a PEF clinical care guideline (CCG) on hospital usage. PEF episodes were analysed from a large prospective database of all adverse events following paediatric gastrointestinal endoscopy at a tertiary care children’s hospital. A CCG was put in place to standardise the management of children who had a fever following an endoscopy and to prevent needless resource utilisation. A chi-squared analysis was used to examine rates of hospital utilisation for PEF assessment before and after the CCG’s adoption.
During the current research period, PEF occurred in 0.55 percent of the 27,100 endoscopies conducted. The incidence of detected endoscopy-related infection was low in the 150 cases of reported fever. Patients who received interventional procedures had a considerably greater risk of PEF than those who underwent diagnostic endoscopy. The CCG dramatically decreased hospital utilisation in PEF patients, reducing emergency department visits and hospital admissions by 52.1 percent without causing unfavourable patient outcomes. PEF in children is seldom associated with clinically significant infection and may be caused by inflammation caused by tissue injury and/or physiologic stress. According to the findings of this study, implementing a PEF CCG may decrease needless treatment while maintaining patient safety.
