ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOSTON
SOURCE: DANIEL Q. HANEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
A NEW STUDY ALSO FINDS the practice reduces infection. Covering patients in surgery is already routine in many facilities in this area.
Keeping the operating room chilly for the comfort of the surgeons raises the patient's risk of infection dramatically and slows healing, a study found. The simple and highly effective solution: blankets.
Typically, operating rooms are kept around 65 degrees so heavily gowned surgeons and other medical staff won't sweat under the bright lights. Making matters worse, anesthesia interferes with the body's ability to regulate its own temperature. As a result, patients often cool down during surgery to about 94.5 degrees.
Doctors concerned about this set out to see what would happen if they kept patients at a normal 98 degrees during surgery. They heated up their intravenous fluids and covered them with special air-warmed blankets.
The extra attention cost $30, and the benefits were substantial. Patients having colon operations suffered only one-third the usual surgical wound infections. They healed faster and were sent home sooner.
``Isn't it amazing that something that is risk-free and has such trivial cost provides such benefit?'' said Dr. Daniel I. Sessler, one of the researchers.
Sessler, an anesthesiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, described the experiment in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Being cold inhibits the body's defenses against germs. It decreases blood flow to the skin, lowering the supply of oxygen, which is necessary to fight infection. Cold also interferes with blood clotting; warm patients bleed less.
``There is a real prospect of reducing complications, shortening hospital stays and lowering costs after colorectal surgery,'' wrote Dr. Neil Mortensen and Christopher S. Garrard of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England.
Sessler said he thinks nearly all kinds of surgery will go better if patients are kept warm. The only exceptions are carotid artery surgery and some other procedures where lower temperatures help protect the brain, and heart surgery, where intentional cooling reduces the heart's oxygen needs.
Covering patients to keep them warm during surgery is already routine in many facilities, said Dr. Robert Keeley, director of medical and surgical services for Carilion Health System, which owns hospitals in Roanoke and Southwest Virginia.
"You have to expose some part of the patient during surgery," Keeley said, but Carilion facilities drape patients with the hot air blankets as fully as possible.
"We used to keep the room warm; now we use devices," Keeley said.
Loss of body heat during surgery is especially a problem for children, he said.
Even though the study is just now being published, Keeley said the medical profession has known for some time that if a patient retains body heat, it improves that person's resistance to infection.
Staff writer Sandra Brown Kelly contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB