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S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
saying they
offer low
flows may be
doing it a little
differently,
based on the
way their
machines are
built, but
they're all
probably with-
in 0.1 to 0.2
L/min of each
other, so the difference is probably negligible."
The more significant variable may be who's doing the driving, says
Mr. Cryder. "Many providers just aren't comfortable running low
flows, or they're lazy. You need to realize that it's not just the machine,
it's also the clinician. I'll often go into other [providers'] rooms and see
them running their fresh gas way above what the machine is
telling them they can run it at. They're being very inefficient."
Dr. Sinha agrees that low-flow techniques aren't yet "ingrained in the
culture of anesthesia." Machines are making it safer and easier to use
low flows, "with a lot of alarms and bells and whistles that keep us
from not adequately oxygenating the patient," he adds. "But still the
easiest thing to do is to throw a lot of oxygen at the patient, and when
people do that, it drives up costs."
Just the basics?
"The question is what do you need your anesthesia machines to do,"
says William Landess, CRNA, MS, JD, director of anesthesia at
A N E S T H E S I A
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