Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staffYou have a fever when your temperature rises above its normal range. What's normal for you may be a little higher or lower than the average temperature of 98.6 F (37 C).
Depending on what's causing your fever, additional fever symptoms may include:
- Sweating
- Shivering
- Headache
- Muscle aches
- Loss of appetite
- Dehydration
- General weakness
High fevers between 103 F (39.4 C) and 106 F (41.1 C) may cause:
- Hallucinations
- Confusion
- Irritability
- Convulsions
Fever-induced seizures
A small percentage of children younger than age 5 experience fever-induced seizures (febrile seizures). The signs of febrile seizures, which occur when a child's temperature rises or falls rapidly, include a brief loss of consciousness and convulsions.
Although these seizures can be alarming, most don't cause any lasting effects. Febrile seizures often are triggered by a fever from a common childhood illness such as roseola, a common viral infection that causes a high fever, swollen glands and a rash.
When to see a doctor
Fevers by themselves may not be a cause for alarm — or a reason to call a doctor. Yet there are some circumstances when you should seek medical advice for your baby, your child or yourself.
Infants
An unexplained fever is greater cause for concern in infants and in children than in adults. Call your baby's doctor if your baby has a fever of 101 F (38.3 C) or higher. Also call your baby's doctor if your baby:
- Is younger than 3 months of age.
- Refuses to eat or drink.
- Has a fever and unexplained irritability, such as marked crying during a diaper change or when moved.
- Has a fever and seems lethargic and unresponsive. In infants and children younger than age 2, these may be signs of meningitis — an infection and inflammation of the membranes and fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. If you're worried that your baby might have meningitis, see your doctor immediately.
- Is a newborn and has a lower than normal temperature — less than 97 F (36.1 C). Very young babies may not regulate their body temperature well when they are ill and may become cold rather than hot.
Children
Children often tolerate fevers well, although high temperatures may cause parents concern. It's best to be guided more by how your child acts than only by temperature measurement. There's probably no cause for alarm if your child has a fever but is responsive — making eye contact with you and responding to your facial expressions and to your voice — and is drinking fluids and playing.
Call your child's doctor if your child:
- Is listless or irritable, vomits repeatedly, has a severe headache or stomachache, or has any other symptoms causing significant discomfort.
- Has a fever after being left in a hot car. Seek medical care immediately.
- Has a fever that persists longer than one day (in children younger than age 2) or longer than three days (in children ages 2 and older).
Ask your doctor for guidance if you have special circumstances, such as a child with immune system problems or with a pre-existing illness. Your doctor also may recommend different precautions if your child has just started taking a new prescription medicine.
Sometimes, older children can have a lower-than-normal temperature. This can happen to older children with severe neurological impairments, children with a life-threatening bacterial infection in the blood (sepsis) and children with suppressed immune systems.
Adults
Call your doctor if:
- Your temperature is more than 103 F (39.4 C)
- You've had a fever for more than three days
In addition, seek immediate medical attention if any of these signs or symptoms accompanies a fever:
- Severe headache
- Severe throat swelling
- Unusual skin rash, especially if the rash rapidly worsens
- Unusual sensitivity to bright light
- Stiff neck and pain when you bend your head forward
- Mental confusion
- Persistent vomiting
- Difficulty breathing or chest pain
- Extreme listlessness or irritability
- Abdominal pain or pain when urinating
- Any other unexplained signs or symptoms
- Manifestations of infection. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merck.com/mmpe/print/sec14/ch167/ch167d.html. Accessed April 13, 2009.
- Fever. The Merck Manuals: The Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals. http://www.merck.com/mmpe/print/sec19/ch266/ch266i.html. Accessed April 13, 2009.
- Torpy J. Fever in infants. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2004;291:1284.
- Fever. National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/supportivecare/fever/healthprofessional. Accessed April 13, 2009.
- Febrile seizures fact sheet. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_seizures/detail_febrile_seizures.htm. Accessed April 13, 2009.
- Richardson M, et al. Assessment and initial management of feverish illness in children younger than 5 years: Summary of NICE guidance. British Medical Journal. 2007;334:1163.
- O'Grady N, et al. Guidelines for evaluation of new fever in critically ill adult patients: 2008 update from the American College of Critical Care Medicine and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Critical Care Medicine, 2008;36:1330.
- El-Radhi A. Why is the evidence not affecting the practice of fever management? Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2009;93:918.
- Leggett J. Approach to fever or suspected infection in the normal host. Cecil Textbook of Medicine. 23nd ed. W. B. Saunders Company, 2007.
