With the Hospitalist Service, we get a lot of infants who are admitted with fevers. Most of the time, they stay for 48 hours on IV antibiotics, and if their blood cultures are negative, they get to go home. This is what I thought was going to be the case for a patient I took care of last December, but what we discovered was so much more.
Ava was a 2-month-old baby who was admitted overnight for a fever of 102°F at home. She got the septic workup done – blood cultures, urine cultures, and an LP – and was started on IV antibiotics. She had no respiratory symptoms, so RSV wasn’t suspected, but of course, she got swabbed anyway because it was the season!…