Underused And Highly Effective Way To Maintain Normothermia – Fluid Warmers

If you haven’t done it yet, here is something you can add to hospital setup. You already know that warm intravenous fluids keep patients warm during surgery than room temperature fluids. If the temperature of these fluids goes below body core temperature, they can cause significant heat loss and subsequent hypothermia.

Fluid warming is the most effective technique for keeping patients normothermic during entire surgery. It is also known to be effective for inpatient procedures, outpatient procedures, trauma, small surgeries, big surgeries and for anything that needs general anesthesia. It even works with caesarean sections using epidurals or spinal anesthesia.

So, why aren’t more doctors taking advantage of this method? The problem is that we choose to wait for too long. Most doctors think of it after anesthesia induction. But after induction, the focus is on airway management, patient repositioning and getting patient ready for incision.

So, the best time to think of it is before you put your patient to sleep. Here, the thumb rule is to ensure that fluid warmers is connected before induction of anesthesia and making the first cut.

In case the temperature of fluids is not within the ideal range then it may lead to:

Severe Hypothermia:

Hypothermia results after administering cold IV fluids combined with cooling effect of anesthesia on the body. On administering warm fluids, the risk of hypothermia is eliminated.

Opportunistic infection:

Lower body temperature reduces the body’s defense against infections. Hypothermia induced during surgery can elevate this risk. Besides preventing anesthesia induced hypothermia, warm IV fluids can also prevent opportunistic infections.

Cardiac Arrest

Perhaps the lesser-known effect of cold IV fluids is a heart attack. Research shows, injury patients are more likely to get cardiac arrest after administering cold IV fluids. This not only complicates the treatment but also results in preventable death.

Fluid Warmers To The Rescue

Fluid warmers used during blood transfusion and infusion help to ensure the stability in body temperature. In situations, where the body temperature can go down, liquids delivered from warm IV bags can be life saving.

The fluid-heating technology available today is incredibly safe and reliable. Now they work with a fast setup time, fast heating time and are easily portable.

So, after entering the marketplace, here are a few things to review when selecting a fluid warmer:
 

• Cost: Cost of disposables and accessories like mounting brackets should be considered before buying a warming system. However, going for a cheaper alternative that lacks performance should be avoided.
• Rapid warming and temperature adjustment: Most of the advanced warming systems, safely warm fluids in few seconds, at the right temperature from nearly the first drop.
• High-flow rate capacity: An ideal warming system should heat fluids at a rate fast enough to maintain body temperature throughout the transfusion. Here, you need to ensure that warm fluids are being delivered even when there are high flow rates (around 200mL/min).
• Patient Safety: The most important thing is to ensure patient safety. Be sure to check with the supplier about overheating safety mechanism, under and overheating alerts, thermal shutdown mechanism, potential of sheer-force and cavitation and so on.

If you need to a place to start, do yourself a favor and check out wide range of premium quality fluid warmers at HospitalBuy. All models here meet the requirement of ideal warming system and are built to ensure maximum patient safety. In addition, they provide the best performance at a reasonable cost, a true win-win.

Meditorch’s, HospitalBuy is a trusted online distributor of innovative medical devices and equipment that uses a customer-centric approach to help surgeons make informed decisions about products and services.