Temperature Regulation During Surgery
A long-standing interest of the Consortium is temperature regulation during and after surgery. Body temperature is normally tightly regulated to about 37 °C (98.6 °F), with women being slightly warmer than men. But anesthetic drugs profoundly impair normal control. Impaired temperature control, combined with a cold operating room environment, makes most unwarmed surgical patients hypothermic by 1-3 °C. Randomized trials have shown that just a 1-2 °C reduction in body temperature triples the risk of serious heart problems, triples the risk of wound infection, prolongs recovery and hospitalization, increases blood loss and transfusion requirement, and slows drug metabolism. Because hypothermia causes so many serious complications, The Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) and Physicians Quality Forum have each made perioperative normothermia an outcome measure for hospital quality. Consortium thermoregulatory research has been covered by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Reuters Health, and United Press International.
Read more about this topic: Outcomes Research Consortium
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