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PubMed1996

Neurotoxicity in operating room personnel working with gaseous and nongaseous anesthesia.

Occupational exposure to high concentrations of anesthetic gases (more than 500 ppm of nitrous oxide and more than 15 ppm of halothane and enflurane) can cause neurobehavioral effects in operating room personnel. Factors such as stress and work organization play an additional role in reducing performance capacities. It is still unclear whether these conditions may become the predominant factor in behavioral impairment when exposure to anesthetic gases is reduced; in addition, we wished to ascertain the extent of neurobehavioral and neuroendocrine effects at relatively low levels of exposure to such gases. Therefore the same group of 30 operating room personnel was examined with neurobehavioral tests during gaseous and nongaseous anesthesia. In this way, the neuropsychological performance was examined under the same stress conditions, but with different exposure levels to anesthetic gases. Serum cortisol was measured as an additional "biological stress indicator." Prolactin secretion was examined to study possible interference of anesthetic gases with the dopaminergic system. The results were compared with those in a control group of 20 hospital workers from other departments, with similar characteristics in respect of age, sex, and education. During work with gaseous anesthesia, average airborne concentrations (geometric mean) of nitrous oxide were 50.9 ppm (SD 20.8) on the first day of the working week, and 54.2 ppm (SD 22.1) on the last day of the working week, whereas average urinary nitrous oxide (geometric mean) were 21.54 micrograms/l on the first day of the working week and 25.67 micrograms/l on the last day of the working week. The operating room workers showed slower reaction times at the end of the week with gaseous anesthesia, compared with workers using nongaseous anesthesia and the control group. At the same time they also showed increased secretion of prolactin, whereas cortisol remained unchanged. Therefore, it can be concluded that lower levels of exposure to anesthetic gases (and not only high exposure levels) cause an impairment of neurobehavioral performance, with the action of stress being less relevant. The mechanism of anesthetics' neurotoxic action seems to be related to interference with the dopaminergic system.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Occupational exposure to sevoflurane and nitrous oxide in operating room personnel.

OBJECT: To quantify the exposure of operating room personnel to sevoflurane and nitrous oxide. DESIGN: Prospective study at a university hospital. METHODS: In 25 patients undergoing elective surgical procedures, anaesthesia was induced with thiopentone/etomidate, vecuronium and fentanyl and maintained with fentanyl, sevoflurance in 35% oxygen and 65% nitrous oxide (N2O). Occupational exposure to sevoflurane and N2O was measured in the breathing zone of one representative of each of three personnel groups (anaesthetist, surgeon, auxiliary nurse) by means of a direct reading instrument using photoacoustic infrared spectrometry. RESULTS: The mean trace concentrations of sevoflurane for the single anaesthetic procedures exceeded the 0.5 ppm level in more than 50% of the measurements. The 2 ppm level was not exceeded in the case of the anaesthetist and the surgeon, but was exceeded in 16% of the measurements for the auxiliary nurse. The level of 25 ppm N2O were exceeded in 28% of the measurements for the anaesthetist and in 16% of these for the surgeon and for the auxiliary nurse. CONCLUSIONS: To keep exposure low, sevoflurane and N2O were used in a modern working environment: a low-leakage anaesthesia machine, high room ventilation rates, scavenging system, no intermittent mask ventilation, low to medium concentrations of sevoflurane, and strict control of the cuff pressure. Nevertheless, exposure could not be kept under NIOSH threshold values in all cases.

Air Pollutants, Occupational↗
PubMed2003

Sevoflurane in exhaled air of operating room personnel.

UNLABELLED: Evidence on potential health hazards arising from exposure to volatile anesthetics remains controversial. Exposure may, in principle, be supervised by monitoring of ambient air or, alternatively, in vivo. We used the Proton Transfer Reaction-Mass Spectrometry to screen the breath of 40 operating room staff members before operating room duty, 0, 1, 2, and 3 h after duty, and before commencing duty on the consecutive day, and control persons. Staff members exhibited significantly increased sevoflurane levels in exhaled air after duty, with a mean of 0.80 parts per billion as compared with baseline values of 0.26 parts per billion (P < 0.05). Analysis of variance with adjustment for within correlation (repeated measurements) showed a statistically significant time-effect (P < 0.001). We conclude that (a) Proton Transfer Reaction-Mass Spectrometry biomonitoring of exhaled sevoflurane can serve as a simple and rapid method to determine volatile anesthetic excretion after occupational exposure, and (b) significant concentrations of sevoflurane may be continuously present in persons exposed to sevoflurane on a daily basis. IMPLICATIONS: The present study depicts the profile of volatile anesthetics, isoflurane and sevoflurane, in exhaled air of ambulatory patients. Biomonitoring of expired anesthetic concentrations is a noninvasive and rapid method to determine volatile anesthetic excretion.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Hospitalization for miscarriage and delivery outcome among Swedish nurses working in operating rooms 1973-1978.

All infants born in 1973-1978 to nurses working in anesthesiology or as operating room nurses were identified from a nationwide registry of all births in Sweden, a registry of hospitalized spontaneous and legally induced abortions that covers 70% of Sweden, and a nurse registry (n = 1323). For comparison, a group was formed that consisted of nurses working in medical wards (n = 1382). Delivery outcome was also compared with the estimate expected from nationwide figures. No statistically significant differences were seen, but infants of the anesthesiology/operating room nurses had a slightly higher perinatal death rate and a slightly higher rate of preterm births and low birth weights than infants in the comparison group and the nationwide average. On the other hand, the malformation rate was lower in the infants of anesthesiology/operating room nurses than in the control group or nationwide average. A case-control study within the group of anesthesiology/operating room nurses was performed. Questionnaires were sent to 75 nurses (25 cases whose infants died or had serious malformations; 50 controls whose infants were normal); 74 responded. The only difference in working conditions for cases and controls was that the cases had worked after the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy more often than the controls. However, this finding was restricted to nurses whose infants were malformed, and work after the twenty-eighth week cannot affect malformation rate. Work in anesthesiology or operating rooms had no effect on the incidence of hospitalization for miscarriage, perinatal deaths, or malformations detected in the neonatal period.

Abnormalities, Drug-Induced↗
PubMed2003

Procedure room for kids improves provider productivity, frees operating rooms.

Screaming, kicking children can turn what should be a five-minute outpatient procedure into a long ordeal for both the physician and the child's parents. The staff at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has come up with a solution that has calmed the nerves of young patients and the doctors who treat them.

Anesthesia Department, Hospital↗
PubMed1998

Fire in the operating room during tracheostomy.

BACKGROUND: Fire in the modern operating room is still a constant danger today despite the usual absence of the historically explosive anesthetic gases, cyclopropane, and ether. During a tracheostomy, three conditions are present that will support an explosive or combustive event: heat, fuel and oxygen. METHODS: We report three routine tracheostomy cases during which a fire was ignited. One patient had a minor burn during the cauterizing of a bleeding vessel. There was a visible flame in all cases and, in one case, the cloth drapes ignited. There were no serious airway injuries to any patients and all had a complete and uneventful recovery. We duplicated the same conditions in our laboratory. RESULTS: We discuss each case and give effective techniques to prevent ignition during surgery in the future. For our study, we reproduced flames in a cadaver trachea using halothane and the electrocautery in an oxygen-rich environment. We describe a protocol that has effectively prevented tracheostomy fires in our institution and may decrease the risk during other procedures as well. Also, we reviewed the literature to provide insight into the magnitude of the problem. CONCLUSIONS: High-oxygen concentration, the presence of fuels such as suture and tissue, and an igniting spark from the electrocautery device produce the proper conditions for a fire during tracheostomy. Taking the proper precautions can minimize if not eliminate this risk.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

[Annual study of anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity in the year 2000 in Japan: the outlines--report of Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Operating Room Safety].

This report contains anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity in Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists Certified Training Hospitals (JSACTH) in the year 2000, as a part of the second series of annual studies started in 1999. JSA Committee on Operating Room Safety (CORS) sent confidential questionnaires to 794 JSACTH and received effective answers from 65.5% of hospitals. A total number of 941,217 anesthetics were documented. The respondents were asked to report all cases of cardiac arrests and other critical incidents (serious hypotension, serious hypoxemia and others), and their outcomes (death in operating room, death within 7 days, transfer to vegetative state and rescue without sequelae) as well as one principal cause for each incident from the list of 52 items. They were also requested to submit the tabulation of patients by ASA physical status, age distribution, surgery sites and anesthetic methods. Analysis was made by total incidents under anesthesia/surgery, and also by incidents totally attributable to anesthetic management (AM), due to preoperative complications (PC), due to intraoperative pathological events (IP) and due to surgery (SG). This paper focused analysis on entire patients, since analyses with special reference to ASA physical status, age distribution, surgery sites and anesthetic methods were reported previously. Total incidence of cardiac arrest under anesthesia/surgery was 6.52 per 10,000 anesthetics. PC, IP and SG occupied 46.4%, 19.1% and 23.0% of principal causes of total cardiac arrest, respectively. AM occupied only 8.1% of the principal causes and the incidence was 0.53 per 10,000. The most frequent cause of cardiac arrest in 52 more detailed classification of principal causes was preoperative hemorrhagic shock that occupied 23.3% of all cardiac arrests. The second was massive hemorrhage and/or hypovolemia due to surgical procedures (10.6%), and the third was surgery itself (9.5%). Prognosis of the cardiac arrest was worst in that due to PC, 73.7% of cardiac arrests died in the operating room or within 7 days after surgery and only 20.4% survived without sequelae. The best prognosis was found in cardiac arrest due to AM, 76.0% survived without sequelae and 12.0% died. The mortality rate after cardiac arrest was 3.52 per 10,000 anesthetics, of them 0.06 was due to AM, 0.39 due to IP, 2.23 due to PC and 0.76 due to SG. The mortality rate after critical incidents other than cardiac arrest such as severe hypotension and severe hypoxemia was 3.48, and of them 0.03 was due to AM, 0.18 due to IP, 2.45 due to PC and 0.81 due to SG. The final mortality rate attributable to anesthesia/surgery including deaths after cardiac arrest and after other critical incidents was 7.00 per 10,000 anesthetics and very close to 7.18 [6.22, 8.13], that of mean [95%C.I.] in 1994-1998, and 7.19 in 1999. The final mortality rate totally attributable to AM was 0.10 per 10,000 anesthetics, which was significantly improved from 0.21 [0.15, 0.27], that of mean [95%C.I.] in 1994-1998, but not different from 0.13 in 1999. IP, PC and SG showed the final mortality rate of 0.56, 4.69 and 1.57, respectively. Five major causes of all critical incidents were massive hemorrhage due to surgical procedures (13.8%), preoperative hemorrhagic shock (13.1%), surgical technique (8.6%), inappropriate airway management (6.2%) and preoperative respiratory complication (5.7%). Drug overdose or wrong choice (2.7%) as a human error occupied the 10th. In conclusion, the obtained incidences as to death, other critical incidents and their outcomes as well as the occurrence of principal causes in 2000 study were remarkably close to those in 1999 study. We expect that this second series of annual studies for five-years should reveal precise and definite direction for us to reduce anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity.

Anesthesia↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Patient monitoring in the operating room--an anesthetist's viewpoint.

The spectrum of patient monitoring techniques and equipment presently available in the operating room is reviewed from the anesthetist's viewpoint. Although electronic monitoring instruments are becoming more sophisticated with self-contained microprocessors or computer interfaces, few are designed for performance specifically within the hostile environment of the operating room. Intraoperative patient monitoring equipment lacks interchangeable transducers, facilities for automatic collection of physiological data, and methods for the display of trends in the patient's condition. Event recording during anesthesia depends upon the time-honored but inefficient handmade record of the anesthetist. Within the context of developing a computer-assisted monitoring and display system, this commentary presents the physician's perspective of instrumentation limitation and successes.

Anesthesiology↗
PubMed2001

The operating room charge nurse: coordinator and communicator.

To achieve the potential inherent in the use of computer applications in distributed environments, we need to understand the information needs of users. The purpose of this descriptive study was to document the communication of an operating room charge nurse to inform the design of technological communication applications for operating room coordination. A data collection tool was developed to record: 1) the purpose of the communication, 2) mode of communication, 3) the target individual, and 4) the length of time taken for each occurrence. The chosen data collection categories provided a functional structure for data collection and analysis involving communication. Study findings are discussed within the context of application design.

Communication↗
PubMed2005

Patient safety practices in the operating room: correct-site surgery and nothing left behind.

Not until the late 1990s, after the publication of the National Academy of Medicine's treatise "To Err Is Human," did safety standards specifically for patients begin to be considered in operating room practices. This report and other studies documented operating room mistakes including, for example, operations on the wrong hand or limb, operations on the wrong patient, and the performance of wrong procedures. Cases have also been documented of sponges or instruments being left by mistake inside patients following surgery. Poor communication is the most common root cause of errors. This article explores these issues and explains procedures and protocols developed to reduce surgical errors.

Female↗
PubMed2002

Operating room managers' use of integer programming for assigning block time to surgical groups: a case study.

UNLABELLED: A common problem at hospitals with fixed amounts of available operating room (OR) time (i.e., "block time") is determining an equitable method of distributing time to surgical groups. Typically, facilities determine a surgical group's share of available block time using formulas based on OR utilization, contribution margin, or some other performance metric. Once each group's share of time has been calculated, a method must be found for fitting each group's allocated OR time into the surgical master schedule. This involves assigning specific ORs on specific days of the week to specific surgical groups, usually with the objective of ensuring that the time assigned to each group is close to its target share. Unfortunately, the target allocated to a group is rarely expressible as a multiple of whole blocks. In this paper, we describe a hospital's experience using the mathematical technique of integer programming to solve the problem of developing a consistent schedule that minimizes the shortfall between each group's target and actual assignment of OR time. Schedule accuracy, the sum over all surgical groups of shortfalls divided by the total time available on the schedule, was 99.7% (SD 0.1%, n = 11). Simulations show the algorithm's accuracy can exceed 97% with > or =4 ORs. The method is a systematic and successful way to assign OR blocks to surgeons. IMPLICATIONS: At hospitals with a fixed budget of operating room (OR) time, integer programming can be used by OR managers to decide which surgical group is to be allocated which OR on which day(s) of the week. In this case study, we describe the successful application of integer programming to this task, and discuss the applicability of the results to other hospitals.

Elective Surgical Procedures↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A computerized anesthesia-operating room information system.

A computerized system has been implemented to schedule, monitor, and display the status of twenty-four operating rooms of a large university hospital. Stored data on posting, scheduling, and status are combined to form a monitor display shown in thirteen separate locations throughout the operating room suite. The display is updated every twenty seconds. Pre-operative (Pre-op), intra-operative (Intra-op), and post-operative (Post-op) information are collected and entered into the patient record to provide the basis for an anesthesia data base. This data base will be used to perform retrospective clinical studies as well as generate standard administrative reports.

Anesthesiology↗
PubMed1989

Tracheostomy in the intensive care unit: a safe alternative to the operating room.

Severely injured patients frequently require endotracheal intubation, either by the nasotracheal (NT) or orotracheal (OT) route, for airway control and/or ventilatory support. If intubation is required for more than two to four weeks, an elective tracheostomy is usually indicated. Transferring these patients to the operating room is difficult, and it impairs their continued monitoring and care. Over a period of 48 months at our institution, 74 patients had tracheostomy done in the intensive care unit (ICU) by a surgical resident (PG2 level) assisted by a chief resident or attending faculty member. Local anesthesia was supplemented with intravenous sedatives, and operating room technique was used, with complete surgical instrument pack and adequate lighting. There were no deaths from the procedure. There were no complications specifically attributed to the performance of tracheostomy in the ICU, though one patient each suffered tracheitis, tracheostomy tube dislodgement, and tracheomalacia. Tracheostomy in the ICU avoids the risks of moving these patients with all their monitoring and infusion lines, and saves operating room time and charges. Trained surgical personnel using adequate instruments and lighting can safely perform a tracheostomy in the intensive care unit.

Combined Modality Therapy↗
PubMed2006

Making the operating room of the future safer.

There is an increasing demand for interventions to improve patient safety, but there is limited data to guide such reform. In particular, because much of the existing research is outcome-driven, we have a limited understanding of the factors and process variations that influence safety in the operating room. In this article, we start with an overview of safety terminology, suggesting a model that emphasizes "safety" rather than "error" and that can encompass the spectrum of events occurring in the operating room. Next, we provide an introduction to techniques that can be used to understand safety at the point of care and we review the data that exists relating such studies to improved outcomes. Future work in this area will need to prospectively study the processes and factors that impact patient safety and vulnerability in the operating room.

General Surgery↗
PubMed1990

Shielding considerations for an operating room based intraoperative electron radiotherapy unit.

The leakage radiation characteristics of a dedicated intraoperative radiotherapy linear accelerator have been measured on a machine designed to minimize the shielding required to allow it to be placed in an operating room suite. The scattering foil design was optimized to produce a flat beam for the field sizes employed while generating minimal bremsstrahlung contamination over the available energy range. More lead shielding was used in the treatment head than is used in conventional accelerators. A small amount of borated polyethylene shielding was also employed since neutron production was present at measurable levels. The room shielding installed in the operating room was demonstrated to be adequate to treat at least 20 patients each month to an average dose of 20 Gy. The worst case exposure was found to be 73% maximum permissible exposure. Administrative control was required for adjoining areas when calibrations and maintenance were performed.

Intraoperative Period↗
PubMed2003

[Annual study of anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity in the year 2001 in Japan: the outlines--report of Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Operating Room Safety].

We reported anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity in Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists Certified Training Hospitals (JSACTH) in the year 2001, as a part of the second series of annual studies in the identical questionnaires form started in 1999. JSA Committee on Operating Room Safety sent confidential questionnaires to 813 JSACTH and received effective answers from 87.9% of the hospitals. A total number of 1,284,957 anesthetics were documented. The respondents were asked to report all cases of cardiac arrests and other critical incidents (serious hypotension, serious hypoxemia and others) during anesthesia and surgery, and their outcomes (death in operating room, death within 7 days, transfer to vegetative state and rescue without sequelae) as well as one principal cause for each incident from the list of 52 items. Definition of serious hypotension, serious hypoxemia and others was those events suggesting the possibility of impending cardiac arrest or permanent disability of the central nervous system or myocardium. The respondents were also requested to submit the tabulation of patients by ASA physical status, age distribution, surgery sites and anesthetic methods. Analysis was made by total incidents under anesthesia/surgery, and also by incidents totally attributable to anesthetic management (AM), due to preoperative complications (PC), due to intraoperative pathological events (IP) and due to surgery (SG). This paper focused on analysis of entire patients, as other later papers will report analyses with special reference to ASA physical status, age distribution, surgery sites and anesthetic methods. Total incidence of cardiac arrest under anesthesia/surgery was 6.12 per 10,000 anesthetics. PC, IP and SG occupied 47.2%, 21.1% and 24.2% of principal causes of total cardiac arrest, respectively. AM occupied only 6.4% of the principal causes and the incidence was 0.39 per 10,000. The most frequent cause of cardiac arrest in 52 more detailed classifications of principal causes was preoperative hemorrhagic shock that occupied 19.2% of all cardiac arrests. The second was massive hemorrhage due to surgical procedures (12.3%), and the third was surgery itself (9.7%). Prognosis of the cardiac arrest was worst in that due to PC, i.e. 86.1% of cardiac arrests died in the operating room or within 7 days after surgery and only 5.3% survived without sequelae. Very low survival rate of preoperative hemorrhagic shock (5.3%) and preoperative multiple organ failure/sepsis (7.1%) aggravated the prognosis. Pulmonary embolism was the worst single cause in prognosis of cardiac arrest due to IP. The best prognosis was found in cardiac arrest due to AM, 82.0% survived without sequelae and 10.0% died. The mortality rate after cardiac arrest was 3.04 per 10,000 anesthetics, of them 0.04 was due to AM, 0.43 due to IP, 1.89 due to PC and 0.67 due to SG. The mortality rate after critical incidents other than cardiac arrest such as severe hypotension and severe hypoxemia was 3.37, and of them 0.06 was due to AM, 0.23 due to IP, 2.25 due to PC and 0.82 due to SG. The final mortality rate attributable to anesthesia/surgery including deaths after cardiac arrest and after other critical incidents was 6.41 per 10,000 anesthetics. The final mortality rate totally attributable to AM was 0.10 per 10,000 anesthetics, which was significantly improved from 0.21 [0.15, 0.27], that of mean [95%C.I.] in 1994-1998. IP, PC and SG showed the final mortality rate of 0.65, 4.14 and 1.49, respectively. Three major causes of all critical incidents in 52 detailed classification of principal causes were preoperative hemorrhagic shock (31.4%), massive hemorrhage due to surgical procedures (16.9%), and preoperative multiple organ failure/sepsis (9.0%). In conclusion, the obtained incidences as to cardiac arrest and death, either in total number during anesthesia/surgery or in that due to anesthetic management, kept decreasing lineally through 8 years study in 1994-2001. We expect that this second series of annual studies for five-years should reveal precise and definite direction for us to reduce anesthesia-related mortality and morbidity by analyzing further detail with special reference to ASA physical status, age distribution, surgery sites and anesthetic methods.

Anesthesia↗
PubMed1982

Effect of ultraclean air in operating rooms on deep sepsis in the joint after total hip or knee replacement: a randomised study.

In a multicentre study of sepsis after total hip or knee replacement the operations performed by each surgeon were allocated at random between control and ultraclean-air operating rooms. Records were obtained from over 8000 such operations. In the patients whose prostheses were inserted in an operating room ventilated by an ultraclean-air system the incidence of joint sepsis confirmed at reoperation within the next one to four years was about half that of patients who had had the operation in a conventionally ventilated room at the same hospital. When whole-body exhaust-ventilated suits had been worn by the operating team in a theatre ventilated by an ultraclean-air system the incidence of sepsis was about a quarter of that found after operations performed with conventional ventilation. When all groups in the trial were considered together the analysis showed deep sepsis after 63 out of 4133 operations in the control group (1.5%) and after 23 out of 3922 operations in the ultraclean-air groups (0.6%) (ratio 2.6, 95% confidence limits 1.6-4.2; p less than 0.001). The design of the study did not include a strictly controlled test of the effect of prophylactic antibiotics, but their use was associated with a lower incidence of sepsis than in patients who had received no antibiotic prophylaxis at their operations (0.6% (34/5831) v 2.3% (52/2221); ratio 4.0).

Air Microbiology↗
PubMed1978

Residual nitrous oxide in operating room personnel.

The concentrations of nitrous oxide in the blood and end-tidal air of 10 operating-room nurses were assayed by gas chromatography immediately and 1, 2, 5, and 21 h after 3 hours of exposure to an average of 380 ppm of nitrous oxide in operating-room air. In the second trial the nurses' end-tidal air concentrations of nitrous oxide were assayed on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday morning, and on Sunday afternoon and evening to reveal a possible accumulation of nitrous oxide during a routine week. After cessation of exposure there was a rapid decrease in the blood concentrations of nitrous oxide during the first hour (from 153 +/- 110 microgram/1 to 48 +/- 20 microgram/l at 1 h; means +/- s.d.), followed by a slower decrease. Small amounts (mean +/- s.d.: 18 +/- 6 microgram/l) of nitrous oxide were still measurable on the following morning 21 h after exposure. At 2 or 5 h after exposure there was an increase in blood and end-tidal air concentrations of nitrous oxide in seven and nine nurses, respectively. The end-tidal air concentrations of nitrous oxide were greater on Wednesday (22 +/- 7 microgram/l) than on Monday morning (8.4 +/- 1.5 microgram/l), but on Friday they were similar to those measured on Monday morning. The concentrations measured on Sunday, i.e. 2 days after exposure, were similar (average 15 microgram/l) to those measured during the week. It is concluded that, after cessation of exposure to nitrous oxide, there is a rapid decrease in the concentrations in blood and end-tidal air, but small amounts of nitrous oxide remain in the body for at least 3 days after cessation of exposure.

Air Pollutants↗