Comments about the Arizant Bair Hugger Therapy Temperature Management Model 750 | Which Medical Device

I've been using Bair Hugger warming products for several years, and although they are fairly effective in achieving their goal of warming patients, they do cause some concern amongst surgeons.

There has always been a growing fear, particularly amongst orthopaedic surgeons involved in joint replacement surgery, that forced air warmers interfere with laminar airflow systems in theatre. This Bair Hugger unit sucks air in from underneath the unit (ie. from floor level) and deposits it around the patient and hence the surgical site. Although there is an inbuilt filter in the unit, given the volume of air sucked in and the hours of use each unit gets, I do wonder how effective this filter is in the longer term. There is an increasing body of evidence that supports the view that forced air warmers may be contributing to wound site infections (as referenced above in Craig Gerrand’s comment) and more hospitals are now moving towards conductive / resistive heating warmers (eg. Hot Dog Warmer).

The other issue with this unit is the amount of noise it produces whilst working. There have been a few occasions where surgeons have asked me to turn the unit off to enable them to concentrate – this is obviously not an issue with the conductive / resistive heating warmers, and I wonder whether Arizant would be able to reduce the amount of noise created by the unit to some degree.

As for the efficacy of the warming, it depends to some degree which type of warming blanket you have attached to the unit (full body, lower body, upper body or surgical access), but generally speaking, with a full body warming blanket you would expect to increase the body temperature by 1-2 degrees Celsius per hour.