Management of Pediatric Postendoscopy Fever: Reducing Unnecessary Health Care Utilization With a Clinical Care Guideline.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to validate rates of fever after pediatric gastrointestinal endoscopy, to describe clinical outcomes of postendoscopy fever (PEF) cases, and to assess the effect of a PEF clinical care guideline (CCG) on hospital use.

Patients And Methods: Episodes of PEF were reviewed from a large prospective database of all adverse events following pediatric gastrointestinal endoscopy at an academic children's hospital. A CCG was implemented to standardize care of children with reported fever after endoscopy and reduce unnecessary resource use. Chi-squared analysis was performed to compare rates of hospital use for evaluation of PEF before and after implementation of the CCG.

Results: PEF occurred in 0.55% of the 27,100 endoscopies performed during the present study period. In the 150 cases of reported fever, the rate of identified endoscopy-related infection was low (4.0%). The rate of PEF was significantly higher in patients who underwent interventional procedures (0.81%) than those who underwent diagnostic endoscopy (0.51%, P = 0.02). In patients who experienced PEF, the CCG significantly reduced hospital use, decreasing emergency department visits and hospital admissions by 52.1% (P < 0.0001) without leading to negative patient outcomes.

Conclusion: PEF in children rarely represents clinically significant infection and may be due in part to inflammation from tissue damage and/or physiologic stress. The present study shows that implementation of a PEF CCG may reduce unnecessary care while maintaining patient safety. Furthermore, multicenter studies are required to confirm the overall safety of similar clinical algorithms.