Patient Warming Plays a Significant Role in Patient Satisfaction, Clinical Outcomes

The study, conducted by Kolcaba, Doreen Wagner, RN, PhD, CNOR, and Michelle Byrne, RN, PhD, CNOR, also demonstrated that putting patients in control of their own thermal warmth while using forced-air warming produced better results than did the application of warmed cotton blankets for certain aspects of comfort, including thermal comfort, self-perception of body temperature, perception of room temperature, shivering and warmth in the chest area.¹¹

Active Warming’s Clinical Benefits

While patient comfort is important and the primary focus of this paper, the importance of patient outcomes also deserves mention given the proven clinical benefits of active warming and the maintenance of normothermia in surgical patients. More than 14 million U.S. surgical patients experience unintended hypothermia each year¹² and unintended hypothermia is a common occurrence in surgery.¹³

Studies have suggested that maintaining normothermia in some general-type surgeries may yield positive results such as:¹⁴

Reduction in the rate of postoperative wound infections

Decreased likelihood of postoperative myocardial infarction

Decreased ICU time

Shortened length of hospital stay

Lowered mortality rates

Reduction in the use of blood products

Decreased likelihood of mechanical ventilation

Reduced probability of needing a transfusion

Normothermia’s relationship to surgical site infections (SSIs) has garnered special attention in recent years, with national initiatives citing normothermia maintenance as a tool in SSI reduction efforts. Hypothermic patients with core temperatures just 1.5 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees C below normal have three times as many culture positive surgical wound infections as normothermic patients.¹⁵