Frequency of hypothermia during general anaesthesia

Introduction: all patients who undergo general anaesthesia (ga) of more than fifteen-minutes must have body temperature monitoring. changes in body temperature during general anaesthesia depends upon many factors like the kind of anaesthetic technique used,operating room temperature,type of surgery,temperature of intravenous fluids and the duration of anaesthesia/ surgery. objective: to determine the frequency of hypothermia during general anaesthesia. material and methods: three hundred patients were included in this study. study variables were core body temperature,duration of anaesthesia and basic demographic factors like age and gender. core body temperature was monitored with nasopharynx by thermistor probe attached to bedside monitor (nihon kohden) model bsm - 2301k after every fifteen minutes. ambient temperature was measured by mercury in glass thermometer mounted on the wall of operating rooms. results: regarding age distribution,majority of the patients 98(32.6%) were between 31-40 years old. minimum patients 9(3.3%) were less than 20 years old with mean age of 38.2±11.1 years. distribution of gender shows 29 males (9.7%) while 271(90.3%) were females. hypothermia was developed in 75 patients (25.0%).