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Recognition of the inadequate management of the patient's
perioperative thermoregulation prompted the American Society of
PeriAnesthesia Nurses (ASPAN) to host a Consensus Conference on
Perioperative Thermoregulation on February 7, 1998, in Bethesda,
Maryland. A variety of health care disciplines and specialties
endorsed and participated in the conference. One hundred ten
perianesthesia nurses, operating room nurses, nurse
anesthetists, anesthesiologists, surgeons, critical care nurses,
medical surgical nurses, and industry representatives dialogued
regarding temperature management and its impact on patient care.
The final outcome
of the conference was the recommendation to establish a
development panel to create a clinical guideline for the
thermoregulatory management of perioperative patients. On August
29, 1998, a ten-member multidisciplinary and multispecialty
Guideline Development Panel convened in New York, New York, to
write the Clinical Guideline for the Prevention of Unplanned
Perioperative Hypothermia.
The intent of the
Guideline is to provide clinicians with a practical, bedside
approach to the prevention, care, and management of the adult
surgical patient with unplanned perioperative hypothermia. The
Guideline is designed to explore the physiological basis for
perioperative hypothermia and cite clinical studies linking
perioperative hypothermia to adverse outcomes. The Guideline has
five major goals:
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Establish a
definition for normothermia.
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Establish a
definition for hypothermia.
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Alert health
care providers in perioperative settings of the importance of
maintaining perioperative normothermia.
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Provide ways to
address the management of unplanned perioperative hypothermia.
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Improve patient
outcomes by establishing strategies to maintain perioperative
normothermia
Bulk Reprints in quantity must be
purchased from W.B. Saunders. To order bulk reprints, contact
Annie Rosenthal at fax (212) 633-3820, or email:
reprints@elsevier.com
Please click on the link below to read and/or print the Clinical
Guideline.
Hypothermia Clinical Guideline [60kb]
 The
brochure is in Portable Document Format (PDF), which can be
viewed with any web browser that has the Adobe Acrobat plug-in.
To view the form, simply click the link above. If you are unable
to read the file, then you need Acrobat. It is a free program,
very useful, and available for just about any computer system.
Simply make use of the "Get Acrobat Reader" button and follow
the instructions pertaining to your system.
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