What You Should Know About Reusable Blood Warmer

By Margaret Snyder


Typically, when you donate blood, it is stored in a refrigerator to enhance its life, if at that time is not transfused to a patient. The temperature in the refrigerator is lower than the standard blood body temperature. If you inject this ice-cold fluid into your body system, you may cause conditions like arrhythmias, shock, and hyperthermia. Therefore, you need to use the reusable blood warmer to provide the fluid with the appropriate and necessary temperature before you incorporate into the body.

These devices come in three different types in regard to the warming technique and technology used. The first type is the one that uses dry heat method. The other types include using a water bath and the other countercurrent. This can be done before transfusion or during the process which is referred to as in-line warming. The device, however, is made with a technology that prevents any loss of heat but it does not provide heat retaining methods.

Once you raise the temperature to the one required which is thirty-seven degree Celsius, you transfuse the fluid into your body since when you don't do it, it will naturally cool down to where the temperature was initially. Additionally, it can provide heat without interfering with the living cells like WBC and RBC.

In most cases, these devices are used during mass transfer of blood or to patients who require more than fifty percent of the body blood volume. They are also used when the volumes to be administered requires urgency or need to be done rapidly. This is because, if a large amount is transfused when cold the mentioned cases are likely to occur due to temperature lowering beyond the recommended range. They are also used when the patients receiving the blood have cold agglutinins.

However, it is important to have certain specific considerations before administering the procedure to patients who are elderly, pediatric, neonates, as well as those with chronic infections and cardiac dysfunction. However, the device should be operating before the entire exercise begins. One of the reasons being that it cannot be switched on, at the same time, it is has provided the required temperature.

It is an advantageous device as the patients are able to attain the required body temperatures and any side effect of low or cold temperatures is eradicated. Another benefit of this device is that it does not get disposed of together with the bags and storage. It is used again and again. In the case of countercurrent, it only requires fixing it to the bag or the body and switching it on and starts operating.

However, it has various disadvantages such as temperature maintain technology or failure. You can only prevent the heat loss by current warming, but you cannot be able to make the patient warm. Therefore, you need to use other methods such as blankets, warming, as well as pads as another alternative or remedies to conditions such as hypothermia.

Infusing warm fluids in the bloodstream does not necessarily mean that the body temperature will rise. They are just remedial ways of providing warmth.




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