1. INTRODUCTION
Fever is one of the most common symptoms of patients presenting to the emergency department (ED).1 It is an important diagnostic problem that concerns all branches of medicine since it can be due to infectious or non-infectious causes.2Infectious diseases can also progress to serious conditions, such as sepsis, which can sometimes be fatal. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the cause of fever to initiate appropriate treatment. In the initial evaluation of patients presenting to ED with fever, a comprehensive history is taken and a physical examination is performed followed by necessary diagnostic tests. In this process, patients with acute fever of unknown focus are particularly difficult to manage for clinicians.
In recent years, radiological imaging methods, which have been increasingly developed, have become diagnostically important for most patients and diseases. In particular, computed tomography (CT) is an easily accessible imaging method found in almost all EDs in today’s conditions. The use of CT in EDs has significantly increased due to the increase in accessibility to the device, shortening of examination times with technological developments, and medicolegal reasons.3 Studies have reported that CT plays a beneficial role in determining the source of infection in patients with sepsis of unknown origin.4 However, there is still no consensus among clinicians regarding the use of CT in patients with acute fever without clinical clues. Therefore, in this study, we examined the use of CT in the identification of sources of infection in patients with acute fever of unknown origin. We investigated whether there was any predictor of the source of infection in thoracic and abdominal CT scans undertaken to explore the etiology of fever.