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smoke evacuation policy we wanted to implement.
3
Demand, don't suggest
Your policy should leave no doubt about your smoke evacuation
requirements. Instead of noting surgeons "should" use smoke evacua-
tors, put in writing that they "must" employ the devices during any plume-pro-
ducing case.
With such a strong policy in place, our surgeons had to commit to 1 of 4
smoke evacuation options. One was a laparoscopic smoke-evacuation pencil
we'd already been using for some time. The second was a regular-model surgical
pencil with built-in evacuation tubing. The third was a clip-on style tube that let
surgeons keep using their old pencils if they wanted. (A few surgeons tried this
