Hypothermia induced by anesthesia and a very cold operating room can have serious consequences: Increased blood loss, severe shivering, surgical infection, longer hospital stay, and cardiac events. Efforts are made to use warm IV fluids, cutaneous warming, and warm blankets, but it often falls short of the patient's needs.
Chinese medicine teaches that cold causes pain and stagnation of QI in the meridians. I happened to encounter this on a house call to a post surgical acupuncture patient recently. She was out of knee surgery only 24 hours and her pain plan was totally inadequate. However, I always bring my TDP infarad lamp because I know the effect that it has on healing wounds, creating ATP, and how it warms the meridians and brings a person to life.
I put the lamp on her kidneys first because that is where we live, our foundation of life. Then I moved it to her feet which were cold as ice, first on one foot and then the other, left it for an hour and she was never too warm. I did her acupuncture treatment, and by the end of the hour, she was chipper and said she could feel the energy in her belly, and she was better. I don't acupuncture close to the surgical wound nor do I put the lamp directly on it and I check the heat and the distance of the lamp from the feet quite often.
I think hospital policy would dictate whether you could bring a TDP infrared lamp to the hospital room. However, no one having surgery or over 50 should be without one of these in their home. I recommend that all patients with back pain, recent surgery, arthritis, etc. order one from Amazon.
The next time you or a loved one plan surgery, consider the sometimes disastrous effects of anesthesia induced cold and assist the staff in any way possible to avoid and dissipate as much cold as possible to ensure greater comfort after surgery and other possible unintended consequences.
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