In the above photo Sales Rep. Johnny Boatwright, of Erbe USA is filming me while testing the VIO 300 D in Twin Coag mode. I am illustrating to him the “Power Shift” between the
hand pieces during Twin Coag when one surgeon deactivates his hand piece and the other
surgeon is still activating his.
Testing the Conmed System 5000
We decided we would use 100 watts as our power setting for all testing, to make comparing results between manufacturers easy. The loads used for this test were, 150, 250, 300,
500, and 1000 Ohms. By using a wide variety of load values we satisfied feedback from on
design engineer at ERBE who questioned our load values. On this unit we decided to test
both the Dual Coag, and the Dual Cut sub mode of the monopolar feature. Below are the
results of the power delivered from each hand piece (on the Dynatech 454A electrosurgical
analyzer), while activating simultaneously, with a power setting of 100 watts (set into the Coagulation display). For purposes of testing we will refer to one active hand piece belonging
to the primary surgeon, and the second active hand piece as belonging to the secondary
surgeon. Results for Dual Cut had the same characteristics as Dual Coag (Simultaneous
Coagulation).
Simultaneous Coagulation (100W setting)
Primary Surgeon
Second Surgeon
150 Ohms
15.3 watts
150 Ohms
15.9 watts
250 Ohms
23 watts
250 Ohms
25 watts
300 Ohms
27.5 watts
300 Ohms
30 watts
500 Ohms
40.9 watts
500 Ohms
45 watts
1000 Ohms
44.5 watts
1000 Ohms
51 watts
If you study the chart above you will notice that we have a very interesting situation, in
that even though we set the unit 100 watts on the display, the unit only delivered roughly
half of the power to each electrosurgical analyzer via the hand pieces. As you can see, the
lower the ohmic value the worst the wattage measurement (e.g. prim surgeon using a hand
piece at 150 ohms on the unit had delivered and recorded 15.3W that is 15.3% of the rated
output out of 100W.