Kording, BSN, RN, CNOR,
the perioperative educator
who was moved and moti-
vated by the horrid things
she learned about surgical
smoke from AORN's
Surgical Smoke Tool Kit.
For example:
• Using electrosurgery on
1 gram of tissue is like
inhaling the smoke from 6 cigarettes in 15 minutes.
• Using the CO
2
laser on 1 gram of tissue is like inhaling smoke
from 3 cigarettes in 15 minutes.
Ms. Kording's concerns intensified when she thought about all of the
smoke she had inhaled over the course of her 30 years as an OR
nurse, and all of it the staff at Northwest inhaled, within as well as
outside the OR (surgical smoke would drift down to PACU). That
smoke, she learned, is filled with particulates, such as carbonized tis-
sue, blood and viruses, and toxic substances such as benzene, toluene
and other carcinogenics.
She soon noticed her colleagues complained about coughing and
respiratory problems. She didn't chalk it up to coincidence. It also
was hard to escape the heavy stench of smoke and charred flesh
shrouding a hospital that last year alone used electrosurgery on 5,066
patients.
"The electrosurgery pencil is the workhorse of most every surgical
procedure," says Ms. Kording. "When you'd walk into an OR, the smell
would knock you over."
It scared Ms. Kording to think of all of the surgical smoke hospitals
produce nationwide because there's no federal legislation demanding
6 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8
• BREATHING EASIER The surgical team at Northwest Hospital in
Randallstown, Md., smile wider now that the ORs are smoke-free.
Northwest
Hospital