| Keywords |
Environmental temperature ; Environmental humidity ; Body temperature ; Newborns |
| Abstract |
A cross sectional explorative study was conducted to invest the relationship between the temperature and humidity of the environment that newborns were located at and the central and peripheral body temperatures of newborns in hospitalized newborns using a primary dataset on 199 high-risk infants. Data was collected on the temperature (oC) and humidity (%) of the environments (incubator, radiant warmer and room), the temperatures (oC) from the central part (right upper quadrant of abdominal surface) and the peripheral part (dorsal surface of hand) of newborns. As well the weight and length was deducted from main dataset with general characteristics of newborns. The result showed that all of newborn revealed the peripheral hypothermia regardless of 88% of them in normothermia, 9% in hypothermia and 3% in hyperthermia. The low humidity of the environment, rather than the low environmental temperature of either incubator or radiant warmer, was mainly responsible for the massive peripheral hypothermia. Proper environmental humidity should be provided to maintain the normothermia of entire body system in high-risk newborns at NICU. |