Hyperthermia refers to a variety of conditions that occur when your body’s thermoregulatory system cannot manage your body’s heat. You are said to have severe hyperthermia if your body temperature is over 40° C. People working in very warm environments or high temperatures are at immense risk of hypothermia.
Certain heart and blood pressure medications, such as diuretics, can reduce your ability to sweat and so the body can not cool off properly. There are several methods used in medical facilities for patient temperature management. These include cooling blankets, cold saline solutions, ice packs, Foley catheters, and cold gel packs.
Patient Temperature Management Devices
1: Inner cooling device for modulating temperature
This is a device that approximates endovascular temperature modulation. It uses a delicate, soft catheter that causes minimal vascular occlusion while accelerating and optimizing patient cooling. This catheter is coated with heparin to prevent thrombosis. It circulates cold saline in a restricted circuit within the catheter to cool its outer metal surface, which effectively conducts heat to the surrounding bloodstream.
2: Cooling catheters
Therapeutic hypothermia is delivered to the patients by using cooling catheters. Cooling catheters are inserted right into a femoral or subclavian vein. Cooled saline solution is then passed into a balloon and/or a metallic coated tube in the catheter. The saline cools down the entire body by reducing the temperature of a patients blood.
Some cooling catheters have an integrated temperature sensor that helps monitor the temperature. Health specialists have confirmed that focused temperature control through catheters is an important strategy to control a patient’s body temperature.
3: Transnasal evaporation cooling using cannula’s
Transnasal evaporative cooling is another practical way of inducing the hypothermia procedure and helps cooling to the patients in healthcare wards and ICU’s. Transnasal evaporative cooling using cannula’s help reduce the risk of an unexpected drop in patients temperature below 34°C while targeting the brain, which is the initial location of cooling.
