Original article
English
Masoud Ali Lfeituri; Fadwa Saleh El Tarhoni
Department of Surgery, Unit of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Faculty of Medicine, Garyounis University, Benghazi, Libya.
Garyounis Medical Journal Vol. 21, No.1. 2004:72-76
Abstract
In this study we compared the changes in body temperature during spinal anaesthesia (SA, 20 patients) with that occurring under general anaesthesia (GA, 20 patients). Temperature recordings were obtained from tympanic membrane (TM) and axilla, and were collected preoperatively, immediately after induction of anesthesia and then at twenty-mm intervals for the first two hours of surgery. Body temperatures at the two measurement sites decreased gradually throughout the studied period in a similar pattern in both groups of patients. Comparing the corresponding inter-group measurement sites, neither tympanic nor axillaiy temperatures differed significantly at any time period. Within each of the groups, axillaiy measurements were significantly lower than the tympanic measurements at all intervals. The mean differences between the two measurement sites were 0.35 °C ± 0.05 (P.<0.0l) and 0.29 °C ± 0.04 (P.c0.0l) in the SA and GA groups respectively, and the correlation coefficients respectively ranged from 0.50-0.85 and from 0.58-0.91). Keywords: monitoring- tympanic- axillary temperature- spinal anesthesia. Link/DOI: