Search

This study is done by Tarek Salman in the Department of the Intensive Care Unit about the “outcome of hypothermia in the intensive care unit”. It’s a retrospective study, the aim is to identify the incidence of hypothermia in the intensive care unit, as well as to identify the major causes and outcomes of hypothermia and to analyze the important diagnostic tests in hypothermia.The objective of the study, is to divide hypothermia according to its severity based on the temperature into mild, moderate and severe and compare the diagnostic tests results and outcomes therefore to estimate the association between the severity of hypothermia and its outcome.The data was collected from the patient records for those who were admitted to the intensive care unit at KaunoKlinikos University Hospital between the periods 12-2014/12-2015.Subjects were identified by means of the international classification of diseases version 10 (ICD10) using the code T68.10 patients were identified as hypothermic during this period, and the diagnosis was based by measuring the core body temperature, patient neurological status and by evaluating the clinical symptoms and signs.Descriptive statistics of the laboratory data, diagnostic examination, presence of complications and the cause of hypothermia was done and include the mean values, standard deviation, median and the percentage, also a comparison between the types of hypothermia was done.We found that the incidence of hypothermia in KaunoKlinikos intensive care department is approximately 3.3/100000 cases per year. The major causes of hypothermia were due to cold air exposure with the presence of alcohol intoxication and trauma as a concomitant factors. The presence of complications were high among the patients and the most common complication was pneumonia among most of the patients without a correlation with the severity of hypothermia. The major informative methods to diagnose hypothermia is by measuring the core body temperature and by the presence of Osborn wave on ECG. All the patients had metabolic acidosis and lactate was higher in severe hypothermia than moderate hypothermia. 80% of the patients were unconscious in the admission to the department.