Statistical Evaluation of Tolerance to Indoor Temperature Fluctuations for Different Lengths of Stay for Cardiovascular Inpatients

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201009.010How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Hospital, length of stay, mixed-effects model, indoor temperature, cardiovascular inpatients

Abstract

Elevated external temperatures highly affect cardiovascular patients and lead to increased hospital admissions. However, very little is known about what impact fluctuations in indoor temperature have on this patient group in any setting. Inherent difficulties in gathering data from this group of patients directed led to developing this research to investigate the relationship between hospital length of stay (LoS) and cardiovascular inpatients’ tolerance to indoor temperature fluctuations. Data collection and analysis involved measuring indoor air temperatures and relative humidity for four months in cardiology and cardiac surgery wards within a hospital in Saudi Arabia occupied by 67 patients. A mixed-effects model was used for data analysis. It considered LoS and gender as fixed effects and differences between patients as a random effect. The evidence shows irregular variations of 1.42 °C of indoor temperature for patients that experienced different LoS, and 2.7 °C random deviations due to unknown factors. Indoor temperature was inconsistent across the various LoS categories and gender by around ±1 °C. In this study, the indoor temperature had no statistically relevant variations during varied LoS of cardiovascular patients, suggesting that patients experienced a wide range of indoor temperatures as a result of other interrelated factors. However, LoS explains 21% of the variations in indoor temperature. Also, opportunities for patients to acclimatize were limited due to significant deviations in internal temperature. The variations observed in hospitals are likely to be experienced by chronically diseased dwellers. Therefore, dwelling design guidelines must be revisited to incorporate enhanced principles of thermal comfort.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Badr S. Alotaibi
AU  - Stephen Lo
AU  - Ricardo Codinhoto
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/10/10
TI  - Statistical Evaluation of Tolerance to Indoor Temperature Fluctuations for Different Lengths of Stay for Cardiovascular Inpatients
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Dwelling Form (IDWELL 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 93
EP  - 102
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201009.010
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201009.010
ID  - Alotaibi2020
ER  -