Assessment and evaluation of body temperature is one of the oldest known diagnostic methods and still has a huge impact on decisions about medical diagnosis, nursing care, treatment and ordering of laboratory test (Sund-Lavender & Grodzinsky, 2010).
Body temperature is of two types, shell temperature and core temperature. Temperature of the skin surface of the body is called shell temperature, is measured in groin, axilla and oral cavity. Temperature of the deep tissues represents the core temperature; i.e. the temperature of blood surrounding the hypothalamus (Falzon, Grech, Caruana, Margo & Attard-Montalto, 2003).
Ideally, recorded temperature should represent body core temperature (Falzon, Grech, Caruana, Margo & Attard-Montalto, 2003). Oral temperature is said to be related closely to the core body temperature by the determination of keeping the thermometer in the sublingual cavity with mouth covered closely during measurement of temperature.
Besides that, there is evidence in the middle of the 19th century when thermometer was introduced into medical practice; the measurements of temperature were performed using the axillary site in a non-standardised way on patients which it gives a poor estimation of the core body temperature (Sund-Lavender & Grodzinsky, 2010).
If both oral and axilla temperature are taken from an adult at the same time, can the axilla temperature reflect the oral temperature which clinically oral temperature is commonly used to measure temperatures among the adults (Potter & Perry, 2006)? We would also like to find out the relationship of oral and axilla temperature between males and females.
Therefore, this study has been designed to study the correlation of oral temperature and axilla temperature in 30 young adults 15 males and 15 females aged 18-27, from Nanyang Polytechnic.
Labels: INTRODUCTION
