ever. It was important for us to know how vendors responded to service
calls and the support they could provide our staff.
We decided to run the trial for a month. We compared data about
recovery time and patient comfort from both the CO2 and air insuffla-
tion groups. During the trial, a total of 272 patients were assessed,
with 91 receiving CO2 insufflation and 163 getting air insufflation. In
18 cases, the documentation was unclear on whether a patient
received air or CO2, or if a tank ran out during the procedure, so
those patients were excluded from the study.
The results were clear. Patients who received CO2 insufflation were
happier and recovered more quickly, partly because standard insuffla-
tion often leaves pockets of air in the patient's colon. Air that remains
trapped behind a stricture of the colon is difficult to pass and can cause
discomfort for the patient, requiring the recovery room nurse to reposi-
tion the patient or administer medication to keep them comfortable.
However, with carbon dioxide insufflation, the gas is readily absorbed
by the body, eliminating the need for the patient to pass the air.
Approximately 8% of the air-insufflated patients required treatment
for discomfort in the recovery room, ranging from repositioning to
medication, while none of the patients who received CO2 needed treat-
ment. Our staff satisfaction also improved. One nurse joked that she
would pay for CO2 insufflation out of her own paycheck because of
how much it improves patients' recoveries and makes her job easier.
Our study also showed that adding CO2 insufflation saved an aver-
age of 10 minutes in recovery time compared with air insufflation. If
you take 10 minutes of savings per patient and multiply it by the aver-
age number of patients you treat in a year, there's potential for sub-
stantial time savings. The time we saved meant we could perform
more procedures, and we calculated that this would mean the CO2
would pay for itself within the first year.
4 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • A P R I L 2 0 2 0
