The Safe and Efficient Use of Forced‐Air Warming Systems

Abstract

Maintaining perioperative normothermia is important to ensure that a patient does not experience inadvertent hypothermia and its consequences, such as increased blood loss, cardiac abnormalities, prolonged recovery, and increased risk for wound infection. Many clinical guidelines recommend the use of forced-air warming as one of several techniques to prevent inadvertent perioperative hypothermia. Safe use of forced-air warming devices includes choosing the right device, assessing the patient for risks, protecting the patient from burn injuries, appropriately maintaining the patient's body temperature, and using the device as directed by the manufacturer's recommendations. Staff members should receive education on hypothermia and warming technology on a regular basis.

Meta‐analysis: effectiveness of forced‐air warming for prevention of perioperative hypothermia in surgical patients

“…). FAW costs about 1500–2000 US dollars and is a disposable blanket that allows hot air coming through the numerous holes of warm blanket to equally and continuously warm the patient's temperature by convection heating (Legg & Hamer , Wu ). However, Pikus and Hooper () indicated that perioperative hypothermia causes postoperative complications and mortality that costs 2500‐7000 US dollars per patient to treat.…”

Inadvertent postoperative hypothermia prevention: Passive versus active warming methods

“…While FAW systems have been used in hospitals for more than 20 years and are proven to be provide significantly better outcomes, they still pose a risk to patients and staff through burn injuries, fire, monitor interference and surgical site contamination 17 . The most common misuse of FAW systems, according to Wu 17 , is blowing warm air directly onto patients without using the blanket (known as 'hosing'). However, the statistical risk of complications arising from FAW is unclear.…”

Decreasing Prosthetic Joint Surgical Site Infections: An Interdisciplinary Approach

“…In articles published within the past five years, forced-air warming devices have been implicated as contributing to SSIs. [14][15][16] Hopper and Moss, 17 in their review of threats common to sterile environments, discussed issues involving initial sterilization, contamination of the field, surgical hand asepsis, gowning and gloving, and environmental concerns (eg, poor air quality, less than perfect cleaning of the OR). Additional traffic and personnel in ORs also threaten the sterile environment, 18,19 with microbial counts reported as escalating to 15 times baseline with as few as five additional people in the OR.…”