room is the OR
table. Be sure
to ask your
surgeons for
their input on
the features
they want in a
table and
arrange for a
hands-on trial
with vendors.
For total hips, they want a table that elevates to their eye level (yes,
it needs to rise pretty high!). It also needs to slide. A hydraulic sliding
table allows the foot of the table to be free of the base so you can
slide a C-arm under it for the anterior-lateral approach to the hip
joint.
Pay close attention to the firmness of the table pads. Your docs will
want a firm pad so that the patient's foot doesn't sink too far down
during knee surgery.
We use tourniquets for our total knees. Our tourniquets let us
change the time and pressure while the tourniquet is still inflated. The
tourniquets also integrate to the OR record so we can track things
electronically.
When we opened, the staff was used to using 2 very large, long back
tables to hold our instruments in each OR, but we found the tables
took up too much space. We improvised. We have a "drill" table that
bellies right up to OR table. It's about a 3-foot by 3-foot square table
that's very convenient to have in the sterile field to work off of. It's
compact for our sterile field set-up. The scrub tech uses it like a Mayo
stand. We call it the "drill" table to distinguish it from a second larger
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 4 5
• STANDARDIZE SETS A typical total joint case has 120 items on a preference card. Chances are you don't need quite
that many for each case.
Virtua
Joint
Replacement
Institute
