The effect of temperature changes on the thermal comfort of people in an operating room

Thermal comfort prediction of patient and surgical team has an important effect on the quality of surgery. Evaluation of thermal comfort at the top of the operating table is an important issue especially when the patient has thermal sensation in surgery under local anesthesia. This study was conducted to explore the influence of the inlet air temperature of the operating room (OR) on the thermal comfort of surgical team and patient. This was performed by applying a numerical calculation to map the air flow and energy field. In this regard, the AIRPAK software was employed to perform the numerical simulation. The results were reported in tree critical area: above the patient, the left and right side of operating table. Results revealed that due to increment of inlet temperature, Predicted percentage of dissatisfied of surgical team and patient increased by 0.1156 and 0.1868, respectively. Therefore, thermal sensitivity of patient to temperature variation is much higher than operation staff.