Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Outpatient Surgery Edition - Anesthesia - July 2018

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Here's a rundown of several patient warming methods you can use to maintain normothermia based on insights from Paul Austin, PhD, CRNA, a professor of nurse anesthesia at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. • Cotton blankets. Patients love being wrapped in warmed blankets, but applying the common comfort measure alone won't prevent hypothermia. Blankets are best used to augment active heating meas- ures and boost patient satisfaction scores. • Convective warming. Disposable and lightweight warming gowns help maintain the body's core temperature, but could impede access to the surgical site, meaning full body covers might have to be replaced with smaller coverlets in the OR. The debate about a popular forced- air warming unit's link to surgical site infections is currently playing out in the federal courts (see "Bair Hugger Absolved in Forced-Air Bellwether Trial" on p. 38). • Conductive fiber warming. This solution directs heat through blankets and mattresses placed over and under the patient to warm from below and above at the same time. The fabrics on these devices must be covered with a disposable cover or disinfected between uses. • Warmed irrigation and IV fluids help maintain normothermia, par- ticularly if the case includes administering large amounts of cold fluid quickly. An important note: Closely follow the directions provided by the manufacturers of fluid warming units that pertain to how long you can safely warm fluid and the maximum allowed temperature to which the fluid can be warmed. AORN suggests you warm IV and irrigation solutions in their own warming units or in units with separate blanket and fluid warming compartments that have independent temperature controls. • Thermal reflective blankets, which reflect the patient's radiant body heat to maintain body temperature, have some proven efficacy 6 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J U L Y 2 0 1 8

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