Can you Take Body Temperature with Infrared Thermometer?

An infrared thermometer is actually reading the temperature above, below or around where you see the laser, and “shoots out” in a cone shape. The farther away you are from your target object, the larger the spot you will be measuring.

Can you Take Body Temperature with Infrared Thermometer?

The infrared thermometer has a Distance to Spot ratio (D:S) of 12:1, meaning at 12 inches away, you are measuring a spot that is 1 inch in diameter.

When taking the temperature, hold the thermometer at a distance of 12 inches to give a consistent reading. The reading is a surface temperature only, and cannot be used to establish the internal temperature (hot or cold).

How do I use it? Depress the trigger and release it quickly. The thermometer measures temperature instantaneously and keeps the temp displayed when you release the trigger.

Clinical temperature measurement

The primary objective of clinical temperature measurement is to accurately assess a patient’s core body temperature.

In almost all clinical settings, nearly every patient is first monitored for vital signs (temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate) to screen for the presence or absence of a clinical condition requiring medical treatment.

In the inpatient setting, vital signs are often taken 4-6 times per day or more, depending on the patient unit. Oncology units often take temperatures more frequently. In the non-surgical setting, “accurate temperature measurement is critical to the assessment and management of temperature fluctuation in the acutely ill adult.

According to Principles of Internal Medicine, normal internal body temperature is 37.0°C (98.6°F). Oral (sublingual) temperature is approximately 0.4°F lower than Core Body, compared to measurements from “the esophagus or nasopharynx.” Oral measurements, therefore, are typically not as accurate when screening for diseases based on Core Temperature readings.

Tympanic membrane thermometers are often cumbersome, may cause pain to the patient, and may be difficult to get accurate placement or readings due to tortious ear canals, cerumen, otitis media, hearing aids, poor operator placement, and other impediments.

Many of the other instruments available for inpatient hospital temporal artery thermometry also require expensive probe covers and touch the patient. This produces medical waste and the risk of iatrogenic infection.

Forehead thermometer accuracy

The question arises whether you can take body temperature with an infrared thermometer, and you can with a high-quality medical infrared thermometer under certain conditions. Problems arise, however, especially during the Coronavirus scare. Thermometer guns can be highly inaccurate, mostly because of operator mistakes

Inaccuracies include operating errors and misinterpretations of readings. People who don’t know how to use thermometers can get inaccurate readings for a number of different reasons. These include:

• Not Following Instructions
  • Thermometer guns must be used at the proper distance – not too close or too far away – to get an accurate reading.
• Only Accurate for Reading Surface Temps
  • The thermometer guns only measure the surface temperature of the skin. That can fluctuate for many reasons, and the guns don’t measure internal temperature like a probe.
• Needs Skilled Adjustment
  • A non-contact thermometer needs to be adjusted to read the temperatures of different surfaces.
• Subject to Environmental Influences
  • Frost, rain, and other conditions can affect surface temperatures. Rapid changes in the ambient temperature of a room can also skew readings. Electromagnetic field and radio frequency interference can cause inaccurate readings.
• Not Transparent to Glass and Other Substances
  • Thermometer guns can’t read temperatures through the glass and other transparent materials. Instead, they make the surface temperature of the barrier instead of the target.

Can you Take Body Temperature with Infrared Thermometer?

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