Identifying and Managing Accidental Hypothermia
Understanding, identifying & treating accidental hypothermia
Learning Objectives
Explain the four different ways a body can lose heat.
Define the four stages of hypothermia and understand the assesment considerations.
Understand the treatment strategies for accidental hypothermia.
Key Terms
Conduction: Transfer of heat to a solid object or a liquid by direct contact.
Convection: Mechanism by which body heat is picked up and carried away by moving fluid currents.
Core body temperature: The temperature in the part of the body comprising the heart, lungs, brain and abdominal viscera.
Evaporation: The conversion of a liquid to a gas.
Hypothermia: Condition in which the core body temperature falls significantly below normal.
Radiation: Emission of heat in the form of electromagnetic energy.
Medic 15 is dispatched on a cold winter morning to the parking lot behind a local gas station for a third-party report of a subject down. You arrive to find a middle-age male lying supine on the ground with a stellate laceration on his forehead. He's unresponsive, appears to be breathing slowly, is very pale and is noticeably cold to the touch. As you run through the ABCs (i.e., airway, breathing and circulation), you start to think about prioritizing the patient's problems and how the cold might affect the patient.
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is commonly defined as a core temperature that's less than 95 degrees F (35 degrees C).1 In emergency me...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Daniel Du Pont, BA, EMT Tags: Patient Care Source Type: news
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