Monitoring Febrile Syndromes from Chief Complaints: Is the Information There?

There exists no standard set of syndromes for syndromic surveillance, and available syndromic case definitions demonstrate substantial heterogeneity of findings constituting the definition. Many syndromic case definitions require the presence of a syndromic finding (e.g., cough or diarrhea) and a fever.

 

Objective

Automated syndromic surveillance systems often use chief complaints as input. Our objective was to determine whether chief complaints accurately represent whether a patient has any of the following febrile syndromes: Febrile respiratory, febrile gastrointestinal, febrile rash, febrile neurological, or febrile hemorrhagic.