Maternal and fetal hypothermia: more preventive compliance is required for a mother and her fetus while undergoing cesarean delivery; a quality improvement review

• Published in: The journal of maternal-fetal & neonatal medicine 2022-12, Vol.35 (25), p.8652-8665
• Main Authors: Wilson, R. Douglas, Nelson, Gregg
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: cesarean delivery; fetal hypothermia; Maternal hypothermia; maternal morbidity; prevention; quality improvement
• ISSN: 1476-7058; 1476-4954
• DOI: 10.1080/14767058.2021.1993816

Cesarean delivery is common, involves two patients, has numerous multi-disciplinary health care providers involved in the delivery management, but has variable levels of anesthesia and health services implementation for decreasing maternal hypothermia and the maternal and neonatal morbidity (and mortality). Limited implementation for either of the ERAS-CD or the ERAC guidelines, for inadvertent or preventive maternal hypothermia, is likely to be occurring on labor delivery floors. This Quality Improvement (QI) review focuses on cesarean delivery and maternal hypothermia. This quality and safety initiative used SQUIRE 2.0 methodology and concurrent PubMed searches to identify systematic review, meta-analysis, topic directed studies, additional published cohorts in the topic area not included in SR/MA, limited case reports that had specific clinical outcomes related to maternal hypothermia and fetal effects. Two quality and safety improvement guidelines have defined the hypothermia activity element differently, with ERAS-CD recommending to prevent hypothermia, while ERAC recommending to maintain normothermia. The peer-reviewed literature indicates that the knowledge associated with surgical hypothermia outcome is known but it is not implemented for maternal cesarean delivery care. Increased maternal-effect recognition, surveillance, triage, and evidenced-based protocol management is required for the maternal - neonatal dyad undergoing cesarean delivery for the clinical reduction/prevention of neonatal hypothermia that has proven evidence-based maternal morbidity and neonatal morbidity/mortality. TEAM-based anesthesia, obstetrical, neonatology-pediatrics and nursing research collaboration is required through quality-safety-ERAS-ERAC directed processes. Healthcare system recognition and financial support is required for maternal-fetal-neonatal hypothermia prevention protocols implementation.