re thermoscan ear thermometer in article ashwin may leo gatech edu ashwin cc gatech edu ashwin ram writes does the thermoscan instrument really work it is supposed to give you a fast and accurate temperature reading in the ear how far in the ear does one have to insert the instrument is it worth the it is currently selling for no they do not work well my doctor started using one recently and i thought the concept was so amazing that i bought one too the thing works by reading the infrared emissions from the ear drum the ear drum is hotter than the ear canal walls so you have to point the thing very carefully this means tugging on the top of the ear to straighten out the ear canal then inserting the thing snugly then pushing a button unfortunately there are many things that can go wrong it is almost impossible to aim the thing correctly when you do it on yourself i get readings which differ from each other by up to degrees and may differ from an oral thermometer by up to degrees i talked to one of the nurses in my doctor s office recently about this and she said she didn t like them either for same reasons she did give me some instruction on how to tug on my ear and what correct insertion feels like but she said she thought it was impossible to do correctly on one s self she also said that she and other nurses had complained to the company about inaccurate readings and that someone from the company had told them to take great care to clean the infrared window at the end of the probe with alcohol from time to time she demonstrated this prior to reading my temperature and managed to get a reading within degree of the oral temperature i took at home before driving to the dr s office i have also noticed tha some nurses click the button then remove the probe immediately this causes wrong readings in my experience you have to leave the probe in a good to seconds after clicking the button to get a good measurement the nurse i talked with agreed i suspect that many people don t realize this and therefore get bad readings for yet another reason in short it s a great idea it may work for some folks but i believe it doesn t work well for a person who wants to take his own temperature
