Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
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I'd be able to keep doing those procedures. I was also concerned that the disposable grasper I'd been using was- n't suitable for delicate bowel tissue. A grasper tip that's too small or too sharp can tear tissue and cause serious complications, including putting a patient at risk for sepsis. I had to be able to manipulate and move various organs during procedures, so I had to have instrumenta- tion that could safely handle tissue. At the same time, reusable instruments came with a different set of challenges. For example, we can use reusable trocars for laparoscopy — they function well and they last forever — but they're much heav- ier. Along with being clunky, you can't see through them and there's no balloon on the end. Additionally, I find that the factory tips on reusable instruments are very coarse. That's understandable, because they have to be made in such a way that they don't break for a long time. But over time, they can get a little bit off-kilter and stop working as well. What do you do then? Just get rid of the whole instrument? It's a potentially expensive quandary. Game changer Along came reposables. The shaft of my laparoscopic scissors is very sturdy and handles tissue well. And the reusable handpiece comes with gel foam pad rings that go inside the finger holders, instead of consisting solely of hard plastic. That makes it much more comfort- able — like the difference between sitting on a cushion and sitting on a hard wooden bench. When I made the switch, the numbness in my fingers went away immediately, which was a huge factor and a huge relief for me. But there's also an intrinsic logic to reposables. If you tried to give me reusable surgical scissors to use laparoscopically, I'd throw them out after each use. Things that are used to dissect, like scissors, need 9 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6