Agreement between measures of pulmonary artery and tympanic temperatures.

The purposes of this study were to compare pulmonary artery, oral, axillary, and two tympanic temperatures and test agreement between measures of pulmonary artery and tympanic temperatures in a convenience sample of 32 Intensive Care Unit patients. The correlation coefficients for pulmonary artery and oral, axillary, and tympanic temperatures were moderate to strong and significant at the p < .01 level. However, intraclass correlation coefficients estimated the intermethod reliability and were below the .75 criterion of acceptability. Thus, one method of temperature measurement could not be interchanged for another.