Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Committee Chair

Cindy Miller

Abstract

Maintaining homeostasis during surgery is vital to preserving health and preventing postoperative complications. Research supports the benefits of preprocedure warming in preventing or reducing intraoperative hypothermia. Better postoperative outcomes are linked to intraop normothermia such as a reduction in the occurrence of surgical site wound infection, reduced bleeding, and faster recovery from anesthetics. However there were barriers to prewarming at the researcher’s institution such as cost, convenience, and compliance. The purpose of this research project was to study the impact of prewarming in the high risk population of surgical spine fusion patients. The researcher also hoped to examine and raise awareness of barriers to prewarming. Although research results did not correlate prewarming directly to higher admission to operating room temperatures, there was a significant impact noted on other variables in this study indicative of the positive relationship of prewarming to intraoperative normothermia.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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