Why we pre-warm our patients: Maintaining normothermia throughout surgery gets a head start in pre-op (25 September 2012)

Summary

This article looks at the benefits and process of prewarming patients before surgery, in order to maintain normothermia (a normal, safe temperature) throughout the peri-operative process. Increasing the patient's core temperature helps prevent hypothermia later on in surgery, reducing the need to deal with temperature issues during and after surgery.

The author highlights the link between warming and patient safety and describes different approaches that can be taken for different lengths and types of surgical procedure.