Inside the OR: The Ten Most Essential Items

Every OR is meticulously designed to ensure that anything a surgeon could need is readily available throughout every procedure. Here are just ten of those essential items. 

1. Anesthesia

Anesthesia literally translates to ‘loss of sensation’, and it enables surgeons to perform complex, lengthy, and otherwise incredibly traumatic and painful procedures on patients who are not conscious of what is going on. This transformed surgical practice, and enabled much more complicated procedures to be developed without worry for the patient’s ability to survive. 

2. Lights

Any complex and intricate task requires excellent lighting, and this is never truer than it is within the OR. Plenty of bright, adjustable lighting must be used in order to ensure that the incision sites are not afflicted by shadows, and that the surgeon’s own hands do not get in their way. 

3. Retractor

These days, innovation continues to change the face of surgery, with many improvements being made with the Lone Star retractor. For instance, June Medical has worked to design a cam lock system, which offers the surgeon much more control and ensures that fewer personnel need to be present in the operating room – thus lowering the risk of infection. 

4. Smoke Removal System

Surgical smoke produced via cauterization can be highly damaging to surgeon’s lungs, and an effective removal system is essential to ensuring that medical professionals do not suffer long term health consequences as a result of inhalation. 

5. ECG Machine

A lot can go wrong during an operating, and close monitoring of the patient at all times is essential to ensuring that they are able to wake up from the operation without any complications or setbacks. An ECG, or electrocardiogram machine, enables everyone in attendance to monitor the patient’s heartbeat for sudden spikes or lulls, and ensure that they are coping well under anesthesia. 

6. Scalpel

The scalpel is one of the most recognisable symbols of the OR. With this, the surgeon can make precise, neat, and definitive cuts into the patient’s tissue, and ensure access to the site requiring medical attention. 

7. Sterilisation Equipment

Keeping all reusable implements clean, and ensuring that no germs are transferred from one patient to another within the OR, is an incredibly difficult job. All operating rooms need to be equipped with excellent facilities for sterilizing reusable implements, and ensuring that nothing touches the patient unless it has been scrupulously cleaned first. 

8. PPE

Personal Protective Equipment is essential not only to keeping the surgeon and those working within the OR safe, but also the ensuring that the sterile field is maintained, and that the patient is not exposed to any harmful microbes throughout the procedure. From masks to caps and gowns, all surgeons need to be appropriately dressed before entering the sterile field. 

9. Surgical Table

This is where the patient will lie throughout the surgery. It is designed to be easily adjusted to suit the height of the surgeon, and the nature of the operation, and ensure that everyone involved is always able to gain easy access to the site upon which the procedure is taking place. 

10. Backup Power

Many factors are at play during a surgery – all of which could, in worst case scenarios, backfire during the course of even the most routine procedure. One of the most devastating possibilities, however, remains loss of power, which would plunge the room into darkness and prevent any of the machines monitoring and supporting the patient from working. 

A backup source of power is, for that reason, essential, and no surgery should proceed without it.

This is a guest blog entry.