Mitigating Surgical Site Infection Risks via Thermal Regulating Modalities
Date
2018
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Abstract
Forced-air warmers (FAW) are used routinely in the operating room to help manage hypothermia, which can lead to surgical site infections (SSI) if left untreated. However, recent evidence suggests an association between the use of forced-air warmers and surgical site infections, especially in patients undergoing general, orthopedic, and vascular procedures. To address this concern, a literature review was conducted by searching the Cochrane Databases, Access Anesthesiology, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Academic Search Premier. Afterwards, an educational PowerPoint was conducted, with the objective of helping Adventist University of Health Sciences (ADU) Student Registered Nurse Anesthetists (SRNAs) understand the infection risk associated with FAW and offering recommendations to safely decrease the infection risks while preventing hypothermia perioperatively. A pre-test and a post-test were conducted before and after the presentation. Paired sample tests from the pre-test and the post-test showed that percentage scores significantly increased by 26.8. Additionally, a F test demonstrated that there was significantly less variance in the post-test percentage scores compared to the pre-test scores. These results suggest that the educational PowerPoint presentation successfully helped the ADU SRNAs expand their knowledge base regarding the relationship between FAWs and SSIs and best practices to reduce SSI hazards related to thermoregulation equipment.
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Keywords
Forced-air warmers, surgical site infections