Potential bacteremia in pediatric practice.

The potential consequences of bacteremia are considerable in all infants but particularly in those from 3 to 24 months of age with temperatures of 38.3 degrees C or more. Physicians have been advised to scrutinize these patients carefully with a variety of diagnostic tests and to treat their conditions vigorously if bacteremia is seriously considered or proved. We undertook to determine how often primary care pediatric practitioners encounter such patients "at risk" for bacteremia. Among the practices of nine pediatricians in Monroe County, New York, involving 220 practice days throughout 1977 and 4,151 patient visits, we found 145 instances of potential bacteremia. Depending, then, on the season of the year, practitioners may face this diagnostic and management dilemma as often as once each day. Therefore, laboratory means for determining those infants at highest risk for bacteremia or for rapidly diagnosing bacteremia will need to be readily available to practitioners.