Researchers are seeking policies and laws that require the use of surgical smoke exhaust systems

January 7, 2021

If you’ve been to an operating room that uses tools to cut and cauterize human flesh at the same time, you know what surgical smoke is. The heat generated by these surgical instruments produces vapors composed of aerosolized chemicals and substances that can be harmful to health.

Two new papers, led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Nursing, show that policies and legislation mandating the emission of surgical smoke from the operating room are the best way to reduce the adverse health effects on perioperative staff and surgical patients. It suggests that.

Surgical smoke poses a health risk to everyone in the operating room. Smoke can be so thick that it obstructs your view, especially during long hours of operation when ablation tools are frequently used. Perioperative teams exposed to surgical smoke report twice as many respiratory health problems as the general public. Smoke may also contain viruses.

Clearly defining surgical smoke is the first step in promoting laws and policies to control it, and is a clinical assistant professor of artificial health nursing science at the UIC School of Nursing, in both papers. The author, Rebecca Vortman, explained.

Surgical smoke has not yet been clearly defined in the literature and may be known by other names such as “plume,” “bioaerosol,” and “lung-damaging dust.” Every member of the perioperative team knows exactly what surgical smoke is, but it’s important to define it so that clinicians, leaders, researchers, and lawmakers can be on the same page. is. “

Rebecca Vortman, UIC School of Nursing, Clinical Associate Professor of Population Health Nursing Science

Vortman and her colleagues have identified research treatises that use the term surgical smoke. They found 36 articles that met the search criteria. “Smoke is an already mature concept, and we found that there was relatively little difference in its definition between the papers we examined,” says Vortman.

In the January paper AORN journal, Vortman et al., Described surgical smoke as “a visible plume of aerosolized combustion by-products produced by heat-generating surgical instruments. Composed of water vapor and gaseous substances, toxic chemicals such as benzene, toluene and hydrogen cyanide. Bacteria, viruses, and tumors that can carry substances; can obscure the surgical field; and can be inhaled. Surgical smoke has a distinctive harmful odor and is watery in the eyes and throat. It can cause physical symptoms such as inflammation. “

In a November 2020 paper published in the journal, nurse leaders focused on taking action to mitigate the harmful effects of surgical smoke. , Anesthesiologists, nurses, scrub technicians, etc. are exposed to the dangerous by-products of surgical smoke each year, but the precautions to get smoke out of the operating room are inconsistent. Only Rhode Island and Colorado have laws that require the emission of surgical smoke. Recently, eight states, including Illinois, have introduced the law.

“We hope that Illinois will be the next state to pass the Surgical Evacuation Act,” Vortman said.

In the treatise, the authors state that the cost of evacuation technology is relatively low. “These systems aren’t very expensive and depend on the size of the facility,” Vortman said.

According to Vortman and Thorlton, the best chance to reduce the harmful effects of surgical smoke is to get the state to pass the bill. Otherwise, individual hospitals and centers will be forced to draft their own policies, and not all Illinois facilities emit surgical smoke.

“Law requiring the use of surgical smoke systems is the best way to deal with the problem of surgical smoke, otherwise the perioperative team and its patients will remain at risk.” Said Vortman.