Effect of active and passive warming on preventing hypothermia and shivering during cesarean delivery: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Perioperative hypothermia and shivering commonly occur in pregnant women undergoing cesarean section. The warming method is usually used to prevent hypothermia and shivering. However, the effect of active warming (AW) prior to passive warming (PW) on the perioperative outcomes of pregnant women and their offspring remains controversial. METHODS: This study aimed to investigate the effects of AW and PW on maternal and newborn perioperative outcomes during cesarean delivery. According to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library were used to search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) up to August 7, 2022. The Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool was used to assess articles selected for the systematic review. Continuous data were analyzed using weighted mean differences (WMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), and categorical data were analyzed by the random-effects model. RESULTS: A total of 1241 participants from twelve RCTs were selected for the final meta-analysis. AW was associated with a lower risk of maternal hypothermia (RR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.63–0.93, P = 0.007) and shivering (RR: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.37–0.85; P = 0.007). AW was associated with high maternal temperature (WMD: 0.27, 95%CI: 0.14 to 0.40, P < 0.001). No significant difference was observed between AW and PW in terms of hypothermia (RR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.24–1.51, P = 0.278), temperature (WMD: 0.31, 95% CI: − 0.00 to 0.62; P = 0.050), and umbilical vein PH in newborns (WMD: -0.00; 95% CI: − 0.02 to 0.02, P = 0.710). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggested that AW can better prevent maternal hypothermia and shivering than PW. In contrast, no significant effect was observed in newborns. Overall, the quality of the included studies is high due to RCTs, low risk of bias, consistency, and precision. We identified the quality of the overall evidence from the survey to be GRADE I. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-022-05054-7.