The META Scholar Volume 4 | Page 26

Could Simultaneous Monopolar Electro Surgery be Safer? By Gregory J. Ward I just can’t tell you how fascinating it is to me, that you can actually pass electricity through the human body, as long as it is above 350 KHz, with no negative physiological effects to the patient. Since I learned that I have been on a quest gathering data, videos, and photos on simultaneous monopolar coagulation and cut sub modes. I have also spent quite a bit of time, talking with surgery nurses who have actually been involved with cases during simultaneous coagulation. On the other hand, I have talked with nurses who work with Cardiovascular Surgeons who will not allow the use of simultaneous coagulation in their OR room. Some feel this mode has some potential patient safety issues. I was very pleased to be able to share some of my finding, so as to get some feedback from the overall biomed population. After reviewing this article, we would like to hear from others on this subject who can share their findings, and viewpoints. CONMED Biomed technical training It was in 2004 that I started to get interested in electro surgery. It just seemed I needed to know more about this device, so I researched ESU schools. In early 2005 I attended Conmed Technical Training at their facility in Colorado, and to say the least I had a blast. Our instructor, Mike Manes was one of the engineers who actually designed the Exca libur, which is widely used in the medical field even today. Of all the units I liked the System 5000 the best, and so that became the unit that I decided to learn the most about. We discussed each different unit, and followed signal paths through them, and learned about different components inside and what they did as well. One part of the coarse discussed PM’s, and we all had to set up and do a full PM on most of the units, following the procedures in the technical manuals we were given. At the end of the coarse we all had to trouble shoot units with bugs, and owe what fun we had finding those planted bugs. It wasn’t until I was on the plane heading back home that I realized, we didn’t go over testing the simultaneous monopolar sub mode. We only discussed the internal dip switches that allowed you to turn on either dual cut, or dual coag, but not the operation of the sub mode itself.