No Link Between Epidural Fever and Patient Size

A study has found no relationship between the size of a patient and the occurrence of epidural fever nor between the occurrence of epidural fever and the length of epidural anesthesia. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (UP, PA, USA).

The researchers examined data on 406 healthy patients who were in active labor with no infections or complications and who requested lumbar epidural anesthesia. The patient's temperature was measured when the epidural was placed and again when the patient reached 10 cm dilation. The duration of epidural analgesia was also recorded. Using the patient's height and weight, the researchers calculated the body mass index and body surface area of each patient. Only 25 patients experienced epidural fever and it did not correlate with the size of the patient or the length of the anesthesia.

"Since heat dissipation is dependent on body size, we were interested in seeing if there was a relationship between size of the patient and the occurrence of epidural fever,” said Helene Finegold, M.D., assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, UP School of Medicine. "The cause of this transient change in temperature is still unknown, but now we know that physical size and length of anesthesia are not a factor.”




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