Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/477058
to prevent overpenetration. Several handpieces now also offer oscillating drilling, instead of just spinning, and that also allows more control. If, for example, you're try- ing to put screws through a plate and bone during a trauma case, drilling at even a fairly low rate of speed can create problems, especial- ly if you have a fragile bone or there's soft tissue in the way. You can end up wrapping up the soft tissue in your drill bit. If you oscillate instead, that won't happen. That's huge. 3. Intuitive instruments Equipment is getting smarter, thanks to manufacturers who've come up with some ingenious ways to help both the surgeon and the OR team. In a typical arthroscopic procedure, I might change tips back and forth several times. But I don't have to think about changing my set- tings, because the handpiece recognizes the different attachments and responds accordingly. It recognizes whether a shaver or a bur is attached, what size it is and the most common setting for that particular tip. If I plug in a shaver, for example, it automatically tells the power source to run the handpiece at "oscillate 1500 RPMs." If I plug in a little barrel bur to, say, help create a tunnel for ACL surgery or to decorticate bone in preparation for a rotator cuff repair, it recognizes it and runs it in unidirectional mode. Since those are tools we use in almost all outpa- tient procedures, that's immensely helpful. Also ingenious and helpful, especially from a support standpoint, is that the handpiece communicates information on battery life. Every time a battery's placed, it lets the system know how many times that battery has been plugged in, and it helps diagnose both its life span and whether there are any maintenance issues. That's great for any facility trying to keep costs down. You can get a sense of usage data and there's usage tracking, so you can see how equipment is being used and what the life span is. That can help you better forecast your needs regarding 1 0 0 O U T P A T 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 | M A R C H 2 0 1 5