Comparison of oral, tympanic and fresh urine temperature in healthy young adult males in Kingdom Suadi Arabia

Abstract EN

Core body temperature (CBT) is commonly evaluated by measuring oral (OT) and tympanic membrane (TT) temperatures; however, there are considerable debates on which of these methods is the most appropriate.

Objective : to evaluate concordance of OT and TT with CBT.

Material and Methods: OT, TT and fresh urine temperature (FUT) were measured simultaneously in 45 apparently healthy young adult males from Buraydah, Qassim, KSA during July 2015.

All readings were obtained between 7:00 and 10:00 pm according to the standard methods.

FUT was used as indicator of CBT.

Results: OT (36.35±0.41° C) was significantly higher compared with TT (35.99±0.81° C, P = 0.013) as well as FUT (35.55±0.76° C, P < 0.001).

TT was significantly higher compared with FUT (P = 0.003).

Using one sample t-test, the difference between OT and TT (0.36±0.92° C, P = 0.011), OT and FUT (0.80±0.90° C, P < 0.001) and TT and FUT (0.44±0.80° C, P = 0.001) were significantly above zero.

Disconcordance of the OT, TT and FUT measurements are further illustrated by Bland-Altman plots.

There were no significant correlations between OT and TT as well as between OT and FUT.

However, TT correlated positively with FUT (r = 0.48, P = 0.001).

Conclusions : oT and TT are inappropriate measures for CBT.

CBT has influence on TT, but not OT.