7. Case duration. Are you doing all 1-hour cases or are shorter case
interspersed with 4- and 5-hour cases, as well? If some cases are
longer, you might want to equip one OR with a bigger machine
with cost-saving features related to duration of anesthetic, venti-
lation and gas conservation.
8. How green is your facility? How you handle CO
2
absorbent may be
a consideration. Some machines have disposable cartridges. You
snap them open, throw away the entire cartridge and simply snap
on a new one. But if the idea of throwing the container away
sounds wasteful, there are alternatives that let you simply dump
out used absorbent and refill the container.
9. Are you doing a lot of plastic surgery on the upper body and face?
Again, the concern here is the oxygen concentration, which creates a
fire hazard if it's too high. You want to be able to meter the oxygen
being delivered to a nasal cannula or facemask down to less than 30%,
according to the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation. Some newer
machines offer both air and oxygen inputs to the auxiliary flow meter
and various methods to blend them. That allows you to still use the
monitoring of the machine, while dialing in whatever gasses you want,
including an anesthetic.
10. How much room do you have? As noted, some machines are very
large. But they vary in size. We bought one that was tall and skinny for
a cath lab, because there was no room for anything else.
11. Past experience with new equipment. How did your last phase-in of
high-tech equipment go? Did everyone reject it, or did you have a
bunch of grateful, happy people who loved the new additions? Did
1 6 2
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 | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 5
