Warming patients reduces cardiac risks
Warming patients reduces cardiac risks
Patients who are kept at a normal body temperature during and after surgery are at much lower risk of developing cardiac complications, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore studied 300 noncardiac patients, all of them older than 60 and at risk of heart disease. Each of the patients had been scheduled for abdominal, chest, or vascular surgery. About half the subjects received standard care following their operations, including warm intravenous fluids and cotton blankets. The other half were wrapped in blankets heated with warm air before and after surgery.
Patients in the warmer group were less prone to heart attack, cardiac arrest, or unstable angina than those in the routine group (1.4% to 6.3%), researchers found. Patients in the warmer group were also less susceptible to ventricular tachycardia, or rapid heartbeat (2.4% compared to 7.9%).
Although previous studies have shown that maintaining patients’ normal temperature can reduce the risk of infection and increase the rate of healing, the JAMA study is the first to show that it can also significantly reduce the risk of cardiac-related complications, the researchers say.
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