The Effect of a Vapor Barrier in Combination With Active External Rewarming for Patients With Accidental Hypothermia

Not Applicable

Recruiting

• Conditions: Hypothermia, Accidental
• Interventions: Device: Vapor barrier

• Registration Number: NCT05779722
• Lead Sponsor: Haukeland University Hospital

Brief Summary

Most guidelines recommend the use of a vapor barrier when wrapping and isolating hypothermic patients from the environment, and this is especially important if the patient is wearing wet clothing. The vapor barrier will contain moisture evaporated from the wet clothes of the patient and increase the humidity. Once the humidity levels reach 100%, the evaporation and thereby the evaporative heat loss will stop. The theory is that the addition of a vapor barrier will reduce the amount of heat loss and contribute to more efficient rewarming of wet, hypothermic patients. We aim to investigate how much more efficient a wrapping model with active external rewarming is with the addition of a vapor barrier.

Detailed Description

The study will use a crossover design on where research participants will undergo repetitions of the same scenario with different interventions in order to serve as their own control. The research participants will be healthy volunteers providing both oral and written consent.

We intend to perform the experiments in an outdoor laboratory in order to achieve the most realistic conditions possible. The experiments will be conducted in Hemsedal, Norway in our "Mountain Lab", a climate chamber built inside a snow cave.

Before the start of the experiment, the research participants will be positioned in a supine position in the snow cave on an insulated stretcher in wet clothes saturated with a standardized amount of water.

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2023-03
• Study Start: 2023-03-08
• Study First Submitted: 2023-03-10
• Study First Submitted QC: 2023-03-10
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-03-10
• Primary Completion: 2023-03-17
• Study First Posted: 2023-03-22
• Last Update Posted: 2023-03-22
• Study Completion: 2024-03-15

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 16

Inclusion Criteria

• healthy volunteers

Exclusion Criteria

• any cronic sickness

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: CROSSOVER

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Intervention	Vapor barrier	wrapping the participants in a vapor barrier as the inner layer (intervention),

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Skin temperature	45 minutes

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Haukeland University Hospital; 🇳🇴 Bergen, Norway