[Considerations in prolonged febrile illness].

Since the earliest days of systematic thermometry prolonged fever illness has fascinated and generated many frustrations to clinicians and laboratory physicians. The authors present peculiarities of 57 patients with prolonged fever illness that were admitted to 2nd Clinic of Infectious Diseases from "Dr.V.Babeş" Clinical Hospital of Infectious Diseases and Pneumo-phtisiology Timişoara between June 2006 and June 2008. We submit data about signs and symptoms associated with fever of unknown origin, dynamics of fever, different etiologies of prolonged fevers, underlying favourable host-associated conditions (immune deficiencies, comorbidities), importance of laboratory investigations and imaging studies in establishing etiologic diagnosis, duration of hospitalization, management of patients. 5% of cases of prolonged fever remained without etiologic diagnosis. Prolonged fever by its frequency, potential severity, multitude of etiologies that are involved, remains a diagnostic challenge and many times it imposes collaboration between different specialists. In our study percentage of infectious cause (73%) is much higher than in developed countries where prolonged fever of infectious origin represents only 27-33% of all cases, just a little above neoplasms. Today the percentage of cases without etiology is smaller because we have better access to more sophisticated diagnostic tools.