[Should electronic mouth thermometers be used in routine everyday hospital practice? Usefulness of mouth thermometers].

An oral electronic thermometer was compared with Hg-thermometer used rectally in the daily clinical routine. The rectal temperatures were, on an average, 0.7 degrees C higher than the oral temperatures. In 27% of the cases, the difference between rectal and oral measurement was more than 1 degree C. The variations between the differences of oral and rectal temperature measurement were unacceptable. It is concluded that the precision of oral electronic thermometers was not found to be satisfactory, and employment of this apparatus can not be recommended in daily clinical work.