Postoperative fever is common after surgery and may be caused by an inflammatory response to surgery, blood vessel damage, or lung problems. It may also be due to infection, which can be life-threatening. A fever that lasts more than two days may indicate a serious cause and require further testing.
Postoperative fever is an abnormally high temperature that follows after surgery. Although it may be due to an infection, the temperature often appears to occur in the absence of infection and is an intensified inflammatory response to the stresses of surgery. Other causes include blood vessel damage and lung problems, and overall, fever is a common occurrence in surgical patients. Commonly, a postoperative fever that is not due to an infection resolves within two days of surgery.
Although definitions of postoperative fever may vary according to health authorities in different areas, a typical example of the definition of postoperative fever is a temperature above 100°F (about 38°C) for two consecutive days. Alternatively, a patient may still have the diagnosis if she has a temperature above 102°F (about 39°C) in a single day. The presence of these high temperatures, compared to a normal human temperature of 98.6°F (37°C) indicates that the body is carrying out an inflammatory response orchestrated by the immune system.
Inflammation and high temperature are part of the immune response to microbial infection and can be present even when the microbes are not invading the body. Postoperative fever is very common after surgery and does not always pose a serious risk to the patient. Sometimes, however, the cause of a fever can be potentially life-threatening, such as an infection or a blood clot.
Commonly, a fever that occurs after surgery and then goes away within two days isn’t caused by an infection. Patients with this type of postoperative fever tend to be in the majority. When a patient still has a fever after three days have passed, the doctor typically looks for more serious causes than the short-term inflammatory response to surgery.
Microbial pathogens can infect the incision site made for surgery or affect sites within the body that were involved in the surgery. If the person also has to use a catheter, which is a tube inserted into the body, microbes can infect the catheter and the insertion site. If the infection grows and enters the bloodstream, the patient is at significant risk of death. If a postoperative fever lasts three days and continues, your doctor may take samples for microbiological testing to look for infectious pathogens.
Some serious cases of postoperative fever do not result from infections but rather from other forms of damage to the body. Atelactase is a condition in which the areas of the lungs that are exchanging new air for old carbon dioxide collapse and can no longer do their job. Blood vessels can also rupture or blood can clot abnormally, resulting in potentially dangerous conditions such as blood clots and hematomas. Fever after surgery is monitored to ensure that none of these dangerous causes of high temperature are present.
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