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Rationale:
- A low body temperature discovered during routine outpatient vital sign measurement may indicate the patient's inability to
maintain or defend his or her body temperature.
- A slightly subnormal temperature may reflect the normal variation in the hypothalamic thermal set point.
- A subnormal temperature may reflect underlying medical conditions (e.g., hypothyroidism), age-related changes (e.g., insensitivity
to mild alterations in ambient temperature), chronic exposure to an inadequately heated environment, inadequate behavioral
responses to being cold (e.g., due to dementia or immobility), or neglect from a caregiver.
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Evidence:
- A 1973 British national survey of community-dwelling elderly found a 10% prevalence of hypothermia (defined as a temperature
<25°C [95°F]) (56).
- Ambulatory screening for hypothermia among 97 elderly persons living in Maine during the winter failed to find a single case
of hypothermia. This study is limited by its small, unrepresentative convenience sample of seniors (57).
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Comments:
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Albert Cheung, MD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Dmitri Guvakov, MD, PhD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Stuart Weiss, MD, PhD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Wenjun Zhou Martini, PhD, editorial consultant, has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Darren B. Taichman, MD, PhD, Editor, PIER, has received grant support from Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd , and honoraria for
continuing medical education grand rounds and lectures given.
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The information included herein should never be used as a substitute
for clinical judgment and does not represent an official position of
ACP. Because all PIER modules are updated regularly, printed web pages
or PDFs may rapidly become obsolete. Therefore, PIER users should
compare the date of the last update on the website with any printout
to ensure that the information being referred to is the most current
available.
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PIER is copyrighted (c) 2010 by the American College of Physicians,
190 N. Independence Mall West, Philadelphia, PA 19106-1572, USA.
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Hypothermia
> Screening
