peting product," according to 3M's court filings. Besides disparaging
the Bair Hugger system, 3M attorneys also accuse Dr. Augustine of
assisting personal injury attorneys in lawsuits against the Bair Hugger.
A source offers his opinion on what's really motivating Dr.
Augustine. "Scott's agenda is fueled by revenge. It has nothing to do
with patient care. He just wants to take down forced air."
Dr. Augustine doesn't hide his disdain for forced-air warming. He is
expected to testify that the device he developed creates an infection
risk. Last month, in a small victory for 3M, a federal judge ruled that
Dr. Augustine must turn over documents and answer questions about
his role in promoting the alleged risks of the Bair Hugger.
"We didn't recognize the problem when I was running the company
and remarkably over 20 years no one else did either," says Dr.
Augustine. "About 6 years after I left the company, we accidentally
discovered the unintended consequence of forced-air warming."
Dr. Augustine points to 6 studies that have been published in the
past 4 years that he says prove forced air's waste heat contamination
problem, including one study that showed 2,000 times more airborne
particles were present near the surgical site when forced-air warming
was used compared to air-free conductive fabric warming. A source
familiar with the research is highly skeptical of it. "It's a very abstract-
ed model that doesn't involve real patients or real bacteria," says the
source. "All the papers that Scott and his colleagues are quoting are
written by his own employees or consultants." In fact, a meta-analysis
shows that laminar flow worsens infection risk.
2. Does normothermia
really lead to faster discharge?
Yes, and it can be considerable. Researchers at the University of
California, San Francisco, discovered that patients who were warmed
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