Whenever people feel that their temperature is starting to rise, they start getting the thermometer to confirm what they’re feeling. If the result is around 37.5°C or more, then they’ll start lying down, putting ice packs on their foreheads, and taking medicine for fever.
Those are basic yet effective steps to combat fever. However, there is more to fever than a mere increase in temperature. Fevers also have types, and each of which can be telling of particular diseases and infection. Here are its types and the illnesses associated with them.
Continuous Fever
If a person’s temperature remains above normal within a span of twenty-four hours and doesn’t fluctuate more than 1°C. Illnesses associated with this include:
Pneumonia
A severe bacterial infection in the lungs usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenza, and Moraxella catarrhalis. It causes difficulty in breathing and impaired exchange of gases.
Urinary Tract Infection
An infection of the urinary tract, it is mostly caused by bacteria (E. coli and Staphylococcus saprophyticus) and rarely by viruses and fungi. This disease gives the infected severe discomfort whenever urinating.
Typhoid fever
Brought about by the ingestion of food and water contaminated with the feces of a person infected by bacteria under Salmonella subspecies; this dreaded disease causes body weakness, enlargement of the liver, and intestinal bleeding.
Intermittent fever
A kind of fever that is present for a certain period of time, only for it to disappear, and then return again, perpetuating the cycle. There are three subtypes of remittent fever: quotidian fever, which causes the cycle to loop within 24 hours; tertian fever, which is within 48 hours; and quartan fever, which is within 72 hours. Infections characterized by this are the following:
Malaria
A disease contracted from the bite of an Anopheles mosquito that is carrying Plasmodium species bacteria. Aside from fever, malaria causes fatigue, vomiting, headaches, and seizures.
Septicemia
A generalized infection of multiple body systems caused by a wide plethora of bacteria as well as fungi and viruses.
Remittent fever
This kind of fever is similar to continuous fever, as the affected individual will continually have an elevated temperature. However, the key difference is that it fluctuates more than 1°C. A disease that causes this is infective endocarditis, which causes inflammation of the inner tissues of the heart. This is chiefly caused by Streptococcus aureus.
Hyperpyrexia
A severe increase of a person’s body temperature, which reaches up to 41.5°C. This is usually caused by intracranial hemorrhage, Kawasaki’s syndrome, thyroid storm, and other diseases and pathogens. Because of its possible complications, this is treated as a medical emergency and therefore must be dealt with by aggressive interventions.
Hyperthermia
While not exactly regarded as an actual kind of fever because it is not the body generating the high temperature, which in turn causes usual side effects such as convulsions and difficulty in breathing.
Although it’s never safe to self-diagnose, the information above can prove useful, especially when describing the fever to doctors. But before the need for that arises, you must learn to stay healthy and safe.