Teething symptoms: cross sectional survey of five groups of child health professionals
BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7368.814 (Published 12 October 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:814
- Melissa Wake (wakem@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au), director, research and public health,
- Kylie Hesketh, research assistant
- Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Flemington Road, Parkville Victoria 3052, Australia
- Correspondence to: Dr Wake
- Accepted 17 April 2002
“There can be no excuse for ascribing fever, fits, diarrhoea, bronchitis, or rashes to teething,” wrote the BMJ in 1975.1 The intervening quarter century has seen the growth of evidence based medicine, yet it has also illustrated how great may be the distance between research evidence and professional practice and how slowly that gap may close.
Good evidence now exists from careful prospective studies that teething is associated with, at most, minor and relatively infrequent symptoms.2–3 How do the views of professionals now align with the evidence? This study aimed to determine current beliefs about teething and related practices of child health professionals in Victoria, Australia.
Methods and results
We surveyed representative samples of the five groups of professionals most closely concerned with the health of children in Victoria (population 4.6 …