Aspiration-related fever: discrepancy between fever and imaging on aspiration.

A debilitated 63-year-old man with Alzheimer disease who had a 6 week-history of high-grade fever of unknown etiology became afebrile 1 week after gastrostomy was performed to prevent aspiration. There was no active infiltration on imaging studies, such as chest X-ray films and computed tomography of the chest. Thus, this clinical condition could be described as aspiration-related fever. In other words, imaging studies may not be the gold standard for diagnosing fever related to aspiration.