your physicians can see in the joint so they know when to tamp some-
thing down and when to trim something out.
As Joleen Harrison, BSN, RN, CASC, the administrative director at
the 4-OR Mankato (Minn.) Surgery Center, says, "Surgeons want to
see an absolute clear picture." Manufacturers have responded with
advanced visualization systems that offer your surgeons unparalleled
image resolution and color reproduction. Here are some features to
look for when picking a picture-perfect arthroscopy video platform.
1. Autoclavable.
Many of today's camera heads are fully auto-
clavable, a sterilization benefit not lost on John Kelly, MD, an orthope-
dic surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pa. He
remembers not so long ago when "we used to have to bag our cameras
because they were not autoclavable."
2. Tablet control.
Some visualization systems let you control
the tower from the nurse documentation station, which means you no
longer have to interact with the equipment on the tower at the sterile
field. You can also create independent surgeon profiles for their
desired settings on the tablet, recording such preferences as camera
head settings, image storage (directly into the EMR or archive to the
server) and image appearance (how bright, how vibrant, how red the
reds are). For a knee arthroscopy, you want the knee to look white so
you'd focus less on vibrant color and more on minimizing bright
spots. For a shoulder scope, you'd set the brightness higher because
you're working in a larger cavity.
3. Voice command.
Some platforms let you talk to the tower
much like you'd ask Alexa: Picture. Record. Shaver. Oscillate. "I do a
lot of teaching," says Dr. Kelly, "so it's great to be able to record
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