Association between intraop hypothermia and SSIs

Editor's Note

This study from the Mayo Clinic found that intraoperative hypothermia was not significantly associated with surgical site infections (SSIs).

Among the findings:

• Compliance with Surgical Care Improvement Project Performance Measure “Surgery Patients with Perioperative Temperature Management” (SCIP-Inf-10) overall and its components (maintenance of minimum body temperature and use of a active warming device) were not associated with SSIs.
• Higher intraoperative nadir temperature was linked to SSIs.
• Percent of time exposed to a temperature < 36^oC and cumulative hypothermic exposure were not tied to SSIs.

Numerous surgical quality metrics focus on prevention of unintentional perioperative hypothermia due, in part, to the association between hypothermia and surgical site infections (SSI). However, few studies have comprehensively evaluated the relationship between these metrics and SSI. In this study, we evaluated individual components of one set of hypothermia metrics to determine their association with SSI.