Synergistic experimental and numerical characterization of a dry-heat, fluid-warming device

Fluid warming devices are widely utilized to provide body fluids of appropriate temperature such as blood and saline during the course of operations. The need for blood or saline infusion may be due to many causes. Hypothermia often occurs in anaesthetized or sedated patients [1], especially in trauma patients [2]. Rapid infusion of unwarmed blood may result in lowering the core temperature [3] which, in effect, causes cardiac arrhythmias, coagulopathy, and increased mortality rates [4,5]. However, regardless of the cause, the need for a fluid-warming device is universal.

Source: Medical Engineering and Physics - August 8, 2017 Category: Biomedical Engineering Authors: Winston Tan, Eph M. Sparrow, John M. Gorman, Jungwon Ahn Source Type: research