Before this question, we should comprehend the difference between fever and heat stroke.
When the body produces pyroges due to an infection, inflammation or other diseases and transmits the thermogenic signal to the thermoregulatory center in the hypothalamus, the thermoregulatory center raises the body temperature set point, while allowing the body to increase heat production and decrease heat dissipation. Finally, the child's body temperature rises.
What is heat stroke? When a person is continuously in a hot environment or in a state of strenuous activity, which will make the heat conducted by the environment and the heat generated by the body exceeds the body's ability to dissipate heat, and it is unable to reduce the body temperature despite thermoregulatory center sending out heat dissipation signals. Then the body temperature rises passively, even beyond the body's tolerance limit, which leading to heat stroke.
Fever is an active warming, while heat stroke causes a passive process of temperature increase, the two mechanisms are completely different. In daily life, if a child is exposed to the sun, especially when locked in the car, the body temperature raising should be considered heatstroke, if the child's body is hot in a indoor temperature environment, it is definite fever.
Understanding the different mechanisms of fever and heat stroke is the precondition for dealing with them correctly and differently.
Heat stroke is a passive rise in body temperature with no upper limit on its temperature set point, which can cause serious damage to the brain and other organs, and is a dangerous state with a high mortality rate. Children found to have heatstroke must immediately take physical cooling to increase heat dissipation and call emergency services rather than taking fever-reducing medication.
And fever is the body's self-protection mechanism against pathogenic invasion, regulated by the body temperature center, which temperature rarely exceeds 41 degrees Celsius, so fever will not do harm to child.
