“The magnitude and associated factors of intraoperative shivering after cesarean section delivery under Spinal anesthesia’’: A cross sectional study

BACKGROUND: Shivering is an involuntary, spontaneous, and repetitive contraction of the skeletal muscle and increases patients’ discomfort, oxygen-consuming, wound infection; increased surgical bleeding, and morbid cardiac events. The aim of this study was to determine the magnitude and associated factors of intraoperative shivering after cesarean section delivery METHODOLOGY: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 326 willing patients were included in the study after obtaining ethical consent and we have used consecutive sampling techniques. Axillary temperature was recorded preoperatively and in the intra-operative period every 5 min. Descriptive statistics, cross-tabs, and binary logistic regression analysis were performed to identify the association shivering and independent variables. The strength of the association was presented using an adjusted odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval and a p-value<0.05 was considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: The overall incidence of intraoperative shivering after cesarean section delivery under spinal anesthesia was 51.8% (95% CI: 46.3, 57.1). The majority of the patients who developed shivering were after 20 min of spinal anesthesia. In this study body temperature, mean arterial pressure of the patient, and duration of surgery were significantly associated with shivering. CONCLUSION: In this study duration of surgery, hypothermia and hypotension were the independent associated risk factors for intraoperative shivering.