Wool based hospital gowns provide better thermal properties

31 Mar '10

1 min read

Wool fabrics based hospital gowns, could prove to be a major challenge for the cotton based gowns used for patients in the operating room. According to experts, patients wearing the cotton based gowns are not able to feel the warmness and frequently complain of feeling cold.

Anesthesiologists at Christchurch and AgResearch, an agriculture and biotechnology company have collaborated to assess thermal properties of standard hospital materials as well as various fabrics they were considering for production of a preoperative gown.

According to Dr Richard French, cotton based gowns do not offer essential insulating effects and thermal imaging studies have proved that the outer surface of a cotton hospital gown rapidly approaches the same temperature as the skin beneath the gown, due to which patients on the operation table complain about feeling cold.

Researchers at AgResearch developed an ultra-fine 21 microns thick fabric material taken from wool of Merino sheep. Thermal testing revealed that the fabric offered five times the insulation of a hospital gown and 30 percent more insulation than a full set of hospital bed linen, which includes blankets, etc.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India