Parental Confidence in Relation to Antipyretic Use, Warning Signs, Symptoms and Well-Being in Fever Management—Results from an App-Based Registry

Abstract

Parents’ confidence regarding their children’s fever is a key factor in its management and there is still unnecessary anxiety and associated antipyretic overuse. The FeverApp application collects naturalistic real-time data on febrile infections and educates parents on fever management. Logistic regression examined the associations between (1) parental confidence and (2) antipyretics use with fever relevant parameters. First entry data of 3721 children (mean age 21 months; SD 22.97) was assessed. A total of 58.0% of parents felt confident upon first fever documentation. Warning signs [OR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.40–0.61], dehydration [OR = 0.65, 95% CI: 0.52–0.81], fever [OR = 0.67, 95% CI: 0.57–0.80] and having a female child [OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.66–0.90] had the highest negative association with parental confidence. Antipyretics were used initially in 14.7% of children. Fever had the highest positive [OR = 2.58, 95% CI: 1.89–3.50] and well-being the highest negative association with antipyretic use [OR = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.22–0.63). In the first entry data, parental confidence was related to children’s health condition in a reasonable medical manner. The use of antipyretics was mostly associated with febrile temperature, but also low well-being. Thus, associations were partly in accordance with recent guidelines.