Hypothermia during CRRT, a comparative analysis

Background: One of the most common adverse events during continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) is hypothermia, reported to occur in over 4/10 cases. In turn, hypothermia is known to be associated with higher mortality rates among patients treated in intensive care units (ICU). The present study examined if a novel warming device in the current generation of CRRT systems could lower incidence of hypothermia compared to previous generation technology. Methods: We included ICU patients >18 years, at Skane University Hospital, Lund from November 2006 to August 2019 and treated with CRRT. Temperature measurements were recorded from the CRRT systems and from the patients hourly. Results: In total, 310 patients treated with the older system vs 32 patients treated using the newer CRRT system were included. We found that historic Prismaflex patients spent 11.43% of their time in hypothermia, as compared to the novel Prismax CRRT system, where 10.06% of patient hours were below 36.0°C (Chi-Square P =.0063). The novel blood warmer is associated with less heat loss compared to the older warmer: mean patient temperature was 37°C vs 36.5°C for these two groups and mean set return temperature was 37.9°C vs 40.9°C (both P