that I attended school and though we went over the different models, I was curious if Valleylabs new unit had simultaneous monopolar capabilities. I finally got my chance to ask the
instructor if the TRIAD has simultaneous monopolar coagulation, and what a surprise, when
he said they had eliminated it from this unit.
Monopolar Electro Surgery Circuit
Let’s start by reviewing basic monopolar electro surgery (ESU) circuit path theory. We
know that electricity flows through every component one after the other, in the ESU until it
exits the ESU and enters the hand piece. The RF waveform will then enter the patient at the
point where the doctor starts to touch the patient’s tissue and activate his hand piece. It’s
the RF waveform that will actually heat up the fluids in each cell until it explodes and becomes smoke plum. The energy then travels through the patient’s body until it finds the return electrode. The energy then enters the metallic plate and travels up the wire to reenter
the ESU. In plain electronics talk we simply have a series circuit here, that’s all. We remember from school that in a series circuit current is common and voltage is additive. In our
series circuit we have a source (ESU), a path (the hand piece, the patient, and the return
electrode), and a resistor (the patient, and application technique).
The illustration above shows the equipment, minus the patient, to complete the monopolar electro surgery circuit.