Abstract

IZQUIERDO MONGE, Dolores; BELTRAN GUERRA, Isabel; SANTOS, José Manuel  and  ORTEGA CALVO, Manuel. Body temperature linear models in postsurgical patients. Enferm. glob. [online]. 2014, vol.13, n.35, pp.85-96. ISSN 1695-6141.

Introduction and objectives: unintentional hypothermia is a situation in which nursing has to be trained for recognition and control. Our objectives were to evaluate the proportion of patients arriving in situations of hypothermia (temperature <36^o C) and to study the behavior of body temperature in the post-anesthesia care unit. Methods: the measurement was carried out by infrared electronic tympanic thermometer. The contrast arithmetic test was performed by T tests. When variables contained more than two categories, we used the one-way ANOVA. Models were constructed with linear and logistic regression. Results: 85.26% of patients had hypothermia. The average admission temperature of patients treated with combined anesthesia was significantly lower than that of those treated with local or general. Both in the univariate and in multivariate models using linear regression, the temperature measured at 90 minutes was the most correlated with the temperature at discharge (coefficient of determination R² = 0.69, P <0.001). Discussion: we found a high proportion of patients with hypothermia (body temperature below 36^o C) on admission (85.26%). We found no predictor for arrival hypothermia despite combined anesthetized patients were admitted with an average temperature measuring less than those treated with local or general (one-way ANOVA p <.05). We consider a minimum stay of 90 minutes for proper control of the temperature variable in a non docketed empirical overheating.

Keywords : body temperature; anesthesia recovery period; postanesthesia nursing; linear models; logistic models.

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