OPERATING ROOM FIRES ON THE RISE
Surgical fires in the operating room affect between 550 and 650 patients a year. Twenty to thirty of these victims will suffer serious, disfiguring burns while one or two of these patients will die. This information comes from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System, which is collecting this data for the first time ever.
These types of medical errors are almost always preventable. What needs to occur is better training and communication. The nation’s doctors, nurses and others in the operating room need to be trained in basic steps to keep fires from happening and hold surgical fire drills to make sure the appropriate steps are undertaken. Fewer than half of the hospitals in the United States conduct operating room drills to prevent and control fires.
The chief focus of this training should be between the surgeon and the anaesthesiologist. Common sense tells us that the three primary elements needed to ignite a fire in an operating room are heat, air and fuel. With seventy percent of the surgical fires occurring due to electrical surgical tools known as Bovies, a device that uses a high-frequency electric current to cut tissue or stop bleeding, the communication between the surgeon and anaesthesiologist is of the utmost importance.
Some have taken steps to prevent surgical fires, including discontinuing oxygen face masks, lowering oxygen levels and requiring staff to implement checklists for the prevention of steps before the procedures are actually undertaken. This is a favorable step in preventing an operating room mishap.
If you have been injured by negligence in the operating room, please contact the Law Offices of Jeffrey J. Kroll; our firm has successfully handled a number of cases involving negligent occurrences in the operating room.
