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Throw Away The Script - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - February 2019

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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at reducing post-op hypothermia than FAW during surgery? A study published in Orthopaedic Nursing claims it is. In the study (osmag.net/9BpBGw), researchers broke patients who under- went total joint proce- dures (hips and knees) into a forced- air (FAW) group and a self-warming (SW) blanket group. The FAW group were only warmed in the OR after the surgical site was prepped. The SW group, on the other hand, was warmed preoperatively for nearly an hour and a half before the induction of anesthesia. Researchers measured patients' tempera- tures preoperatively upon arrival and again post-operatively. They observed post-op hypothermia in 31.3% of the FAW group, com- pared to just 14% of patients in the SW group. This led researchers to conclude that the longer a patient is warmed pre-op, the warmer that patient's temperature will be post-op. But the study also concluded that "early warming with SW blankets was more effective than FAW devices [intraoperatively] in the prevention of post-op hypothermia in elective [hip and knee arthroplasty]." OSM 1 0 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 • ADDED BONUS Not only can prewarming for as little as 10 minutes reduce the likelihood of hypothermia, it can also lessen patient anxiety and bolster their overall satisfaction. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN, CNOR Dr. Austin (paustin@txwes.edu) is a professor of nurse anesthesia at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas.

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