Quad fever: Treatment through lowering of ambient temperature

Shyam Krishnan; Pulak Nigam; Omar Bachh; Madabushi Vasudevan

doi:10.4103/ijccm.IJCCM_295_17

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Quad fever: Treatment through lowering of ambient temperature

Shyam Krishnan, Pulak Nigam, Omar Bachh, Madabushi Vasudevan

Keywords : Hyperpyrexia, paraparesis, quad fever, spinal cord injury, thermoregulation

Citation Information : Krishnan S, Nigam P, Bachh O, Vasudevan M. Quad fever: Treatment through lowering of ambient temperature. Indian J Crit Care Med 2018; 22 (1):43-45.

DOI: 10.4103/ijccm.IJCCM_295_17

License: CC BY-ND 3.0

Published Online: 01-01-2018

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Abstract

Hyperpyrexia is a rare and at times fatal condition seen in an Intensive Care Unit setup. We encountered a case of a 65-year-old patient with road traffic accident presenting with dorsal spine fracture at D₁₀level. He underwent decompression and fusion for the same. He developed hyperpyrexia of sudden onset on the 10^th day of admission with no source of infection and adequate broad-spectrum antibiotic coverage with adequate thrombo-embolic prevention in place. The patient showed no response to antipyretic agents and other cooling methods. The origin of hyperthermia was idiopathic, and we speculate that the cause was secondary to hyperthermic thermoregulatory dysfunction often quoted as “quad fever,” seen in spinal cord injury. We present a brief review of literature and the importance of early identification and treatment of this potentially fatal condition.

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