A fever can be a sign of a serious infection in kids with sickle cell disease. The hospital health care team didn't find a serious infection, so your child can now go home. Follow these instructions to care for your child.

• Keep giving your child the usual daily medicines unless your hospital health care team told you to stop them.
• Give any new medicines prescribed during the hospital stay.
• Be sure your child drinks plenty of liquids.
• Let your child rest until they feel well enough to do normal activities.
• Make a follow-up appointment with your child's specialist (hematology doctor) to review how your child is doing.

Your child:

• has another fever of 101°F (38.3°C) or higher and/or chills after being fever-free for 24 hours
• is coughing a lot
• has chest pain or any trouble breathing
• has pain that is not helped by medicines at home
• is extremely tired
• has pale skin
• gets a severe headache
• has severe abdominal pain or swelling

The specialist knows your child's health better than any other doctor. So it's always best to call your hematology doctor when there's a problem.

Your child:

• has trouble seeing
• has weakness in part of the body
• has a seizure
• is hard to wake up
• struggles to breathe

When you call 911, tell emergency responders that your child has sickle cell disease.

Why is fever a problem for kids with sickle cell disease? A fever can be an early warning sign of an infection or other problem.

Kids with sickle cell disease are more likely to get infections in their blood and other places, mostly because the sickle cells damage the spleen over time. The spleen's job is to filter out germs from the blood that cause infection. When it's damaged, it can't do that properly.

Fever also can be a sign of another serious problem, like acute chest syndrome.

What do health care providers do? When kids with sickle cell disease and a fever stay in the hospital, the health care team watches to be sure nothing serious is going on.

The hospital health care team will do tests. Often, they'll give a child antibiotics before test results come in, just in case there's an infection with bacteria (a type of germ). If tests show there's no serious infection, the care team will stop the antibiotics.

Hospital health care teams also give kids IV fluids (fluids given into a vein) to treat dehydration (not enough water in the body).