Good day everyone,
It's been a while, I do hope you're in good health as always...
It becomes pertinent to talk about this topic as it could be a life saver even before getting to the hospital because of it's efficacy.
I have been working in the hospital for months now and without going through research papers, I can confidently say that fever is the most common presenting complaint patients come with in the hospital and this makes more than the 60% of the cases a doctor in our environment will see throughout his practice.
It is so because most of the illnesses presents first by elevating our body's temperature as the body struggles to adjust distorting the internal milieu of homeostasis manifesting so as fever.
Fever on its own is never a diagnosis but it is always a pointer that something is going wrong in the body system.
Tepid sponging is a crude way our forefathers used even before the invention of paracetamol and other antipyretics in managing fever so it doesn't escalate, but with the invention of medications we are gradually losing the skills of tepid sponging without knowing that it works faster and better than drugs.
NOTE: THIS IS IN NO WAY DISCREDITING THE RELEVANCE OF DRUGS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF FEVER AT ALL.
Tepid sponging does not necessarily mean dipping towels in cold water, squeezing it and then placing them on the body of the child having fever, no, it's far from that.
Tepid sponging could be said to be a nasty procedure because of the state it leaves the place at which it was done, but when done well, reduces the fever more than antipyretics would do.
Materials Needed For Tepid Sponging
- Clean dry towel
- Bowl of cold water, not ice water
- Mackintosh to avoid soaking the bed
Process:
Lay the baby/boy/girl having temperature on the bed or alternative flat surface covered with mackintosh
Get a bowl of water
Dip the clean towel inside the bowl of water
Without squeezing the towel, take it like that with the dripping water and place it on the body of the child having fever
Repeat this over and over again for about 20-30 minutes
Stop immediately you notice the child starts shivering because this will be counterproductive, why?
Shivering is the body's mechanism of adjusting to cold which means the body is trying to generate more heat, hence, increase the body temperature which your main aim was to reduce.
Fever is not a symptom we should overlook at any point in time and this is because of the dangerous consequences that comes with it which includes but not limited to, Febrile convulsions especially in children from 6months to 5years subsequently leading to brain damage, organ failures and death at extreme cases.
Learn tepid sponging today and save your child from suffering from the sequelae of fever!!!
I do hope you learnt something new today?
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Thanks for reading and do have a nice day ahead 👍