Dartmouth General patients get special gowns to stay warm

Patients who undergo major operations at the Dartmouth General Hospital are getting help staying warm thanks to a specially-designed hospital gown.

The hospital is the first in Atlantic Canada to embrace Bair Paws, a new toolaimed at preserving normal body temperature during surgery.

Patients slip on the disposable gown like a normal hospital gown. It includes an opening for an air hose which is connected to a heating unit the size of a handbag, which blows warm air into the gown.

Henry Adamson, an anesthesiologist, helped bring the units to Dartmouth General Hospital, where they are used for all major surgeries. He said keeping patients at their normal body temperature helps stave off infections.

"To prevent infection we need good blood flow to the skin," he said.

"We need all our killer cells or antibodies to function normally and at anything less than 36.5 C they do not function normally."

Adamson said operating rooms are kept cool and so are the instruments and fluids used during surgeries.

He said about half the patients who undergo surgery come out of it with a lower than normal body temperature, which leaves them more open to infections.

"If a patient during a major surgery cools to about 34 C which is quite likely it can take about five hours to get back to a normal body temperature and during that time you're very much vulnerable to infection." Adamson said.

He said when the body is properly heated, patients also bleed less, which saves surgeons from having to transfuse blood. There's also less of a shock to the heart.

It costs the hospital about $20 per patient to use the special gown, but Adamson said when you factor in the savings from not havingto use and launder as many blankets, the new procedure isn't much more expensive.

Chris Underhill, who has been an operating room nurse for more than 30 years, said patients are embracing the change.

"They look so relaxed and ready to go for surgery," she said. "Up until now they would be very anxious, cold, wrapped up in blankets."