Technical Field
This invention relates generally to blankets, and more particularly to a warming blanket suitable for use by patients undergoing medical procedures.
Background Art
Patients undergoing surgery or other medical procedures can experience significant drops in body temperature, both while under the affect of anesthesia and while recovering. Many medical procedures—from routine endoscopies to complex surgeries—can last more than an hour with the patient sedated with anesthesia. During such procedures, the patient's core body temperature can drop up to 1.7 degrees centigrade due to anesthetization. Clinical studies have shown that mitigating this temperature drop can have positive effects after the procedure. Benefits of preventing significant temperature drop include lower risk of infection after the operation, faster healing, and lower incidents of excessive bleeding.
Preventing core temperature drop is not a trivial task. One cannot simply “turn up the thermostat” in the operating room. To prevent an anesthetized patient from cooling, the necessary room temperature would not only cause medical personnel to be uncomfortable, but could even prevent them from doing their jobs properly. Prior patient warming attempts have been cumbersome and expensive. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,238 to Ragan et al. describes a disposable patient heating blanket where multiple layers form an air chamber. A complex series of blowers, heating devices, cooling devices, and so forth are then connected to the device. This complex network of machines then introduces conditioned air into the chamber. The problem with such devices, aside from cost and complexity, is that the necessary tubes, conduits, and machines frequently get in the way during a medical procedure. Additionally, the machinery is noisy and can disrupt communication during the medical procedure.
It would be advantageous to have a more effective and lower cost patient warming device.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.