Temperature Monitoring
Sep 02, 2024When you’re not under anaesthesia, your body has an incredible ability to keep your core body temperature within 0.2 degrees of 37°C! 🌞 It does this through clever means such as making you put a jumper on, or move to a cooler area, or shivering, or sweating. This is called thermoregulation. ❄️💦
When you’re under anaesthesia, your thermoregulation is rendered far less effective. 😴 It’s so ineffective that your temperature can drop to 34.5°C within 30 minutes of induction! ⏳
You should use temperature monitoring:
- If the surgery will take more than 1 hour ⏰
- If you are using an active warming device (ANZCA) 🔥
What is the problem with low core body temperature? ❓
The enzymatic processes that occur in the cells are all calibrated for a normal body temperature. 🧬 Everything from cardiac conduction to blood clotting is temperature-dependent, so for a safe anaesthetic we need to keep the core body temperature as close as possible to 37°C. ❤️💉
How do we do this? 🛠️
The first step is to monitor the core body temperature. We can do this via several means:
- Tympanic membrane or forehead (Intermittent) 👂👤
- Temperature probe in the nasopharynx or oesophagus (continuous, effective and safe) 📉
- Invasive monitoring via pulmonary artery catheter (most accurate, rarely used) 🫁
- Bladder (requires a specific type of urinary catheter) 🚽
Now that we know the core body temperature, we can guide our chosen warming plan:
- Warm blankets (cheap, easy, ineffective) 🛏️
- Warm environment (moderately effective, impacts the rest of the team) 🌡️
- Forced air warmer (effective in most surgical positions) 💨
- Contact body warmers (effective in most surgical positions) 🔥
- Intravenous fluid warmer (most effective, most expensive) 💉💰
Check out our Live Series Monitoring Masterclass for more information! 🎥📚
Build knowledge ✅
Improve safety ✅
Ref: Bindu B, Bindra A, Rath G. Temperature management under general anesthesia: Compulsion or option. J Anaesthesiol Clin Pharmacol. 2017 Jul-Sep;33(3):306-316. doi: 10.4103/joacp.JOACP_334_16. PMID: 29109627; PMCID: PMC5672515.
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