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• Hypothermic patients
were on average older —
in the middle to late 70s
— than normothermic
patients, and had a lower
BMI.
• The odds of deep
surgical site infections
were 3.3 times higher in
patients who developed
hypothermia than in
those who did not. The
overall infection rate
was: 1.2% for deep inci-
sional SSI, 1.5% for
superficial incisional
SSI, and 4.6% for
organ/space SSI.
Craig Silverton, DO, a
Henry Ford Hospital
orthopedic surgeon and
the study's senior author,
says the association
between hypothermia,
advanced age and BMI
and post-surgery infec-
tions, despite the use of
re-warming devices are
new, sobering risk fac-
tors physicians need to
