Two authors (Z.A. and A.F.) screened the abstracts of retrieved
articles and removed review articles, abstracts without
full articles, and studies that did not include intraoperative core
temperature readings. Full articles of all remaining abstracts
were retrieved. Full articles with forced-air prewarming and
intraoperative core temperature readings were included in the
final meta-analysis.
To assess the quality of the selected studies we used the 5-
point “Jadad Score.” [21]. The scoring is based on 3 questions
that are answered “yes” or “no”: (1) randomization, (2) blinding,
and (3) description of withdrawals/dropouts with up to 2
additional points being awarded for appropriateness of method
of randomization and blinding. Scores of 1 or 2 are traditionally
considered lower quality. In addition, we evaluated concealed
allocation in our quality measure. Therefore, we used
a Jadad score of 0 to 5 with the addition of plus 1 if concealed
allocation was noted.
After finalizing the articles, information on the demographic
and morphometric measurements from each article was extracted.
This information included sample size, types of surgery,
height, weight, length of procedure, temperature readings, duration
of prewarming, randomization, ASA PS classification, age,