Clinical approach to fever in the neurosurgical intensive care unit: Focus on drug fever

As fever is one of the cardinal signs of infection, the presence of fever in a patient in the neurosurgical intensive care unit (NSICU) raises the question of whether it is infectious in etiology. Infectious and noninfectious causes of fever in the NSICU may be determined based upon assessment of clinical signs and symptoms, the degree of temperature elevation, the relationship of the pulse to the fever (e.g., an infectious process resulting in hyperpyrexia and bradycardia), and when the fever occurs (e.g., related to the length of stay in the NSICU). There are many noninfectious disorders which contribute to temperatures >102°F in the NSICU; these include drug fevers, deep vein thrombosis, phlebitis/pulmonary embolism, acute myocardial infarction, atelectasis, dehydration, acute gout flare, malignancy, acute pancreatitis, transfusion associated hepatitis, and hemorrhage. Infectious rather than noninfectious disorders, however, are more typically associated with high-grade fevers (>102°F.) in the NSICU, and nosocomial pneumonia, (synonymous with ventilator-associated pneumonia [VAP]), is the leading culprit, followed by nosocomial infections and Clostridium difficile.