Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
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thing we did was look at current literature regarding surgical smoke — what it is, how harmful it is, and the most common recommendations for managing it in the operating room. In the 4-and-a-half years I've been in the OR, I'd seen physicians emphasize smoke evacuation on certain procedures, but not with every procedure that generates smoke. That was also true for folks who'd been in the OR longer than I have. The whole process was illuminating, and the team learned a lot. For example, we found out that many microorganisms survive the electrosurgical process. One article explained that when tissue becomes super-heated, the cells rupture and the liquid within the cells is dispersed into the air. That means cancer cells, hepatitis, HIV and 7 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 | A P R I L 2 0 1 5 T here's no question that surgical smoke evacuation is a "massively important topic," says Robert S. Bray Jr., MD, a neurological spine surgeon and the founder and CEO of DISC Sports and Spine Center in Los Angeles. "The research is overwhelming that smoke is bad for people in the room." The big question, he says, is how best to handle it. "The challenge that companies have (with electrosurgical devices) is to come up with an instrument that interferes as little as possible, that's as tactile as current pieces and that's as cost-effective as a disposable device," says Dr. Bray. Several companies are trying to address that challenge, with pens that are designed to be light and ergonomic while minimizing the impact of the relatively thin built-in tubing by, among other things, engineering it with the capability to rotate 360 degrees as the surgeon maneuvers. Some also offer a variety of grip methods, so surgeons don't have to adapt their pre- ferred grips. Newer devices can also be connected to most, if not all, evacuators, making it easier to virtually eliminate the smoke-related hazards faced by staff who spend hours at a time in the OR. — Jim Burger EVACUATE SMOKE AT THE SOURCE Integrated Smoke Evacuation Pencils z ERGONOMIC EVACUATION Megadyne's Zip Pen is one of a growing number of electrosurgery pencils with a built-in smoke evacuator.