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Surgical Smoke Nearly Killed Me - Outpatient Surgery Magazine - February 2018

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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Fortunately, I was placed on the transplant list. While I wait- ed for a donor, the disease pro- gressed fairly rapidly. I was on oxygen 24/7, could hardly move and felt like I was dying. Eventually in 2014, I underwent the double lung transplant and slowly got my life back. Still, I was stumped. Environmental pollutants are often attributed to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and being a smoker can increase your risk of getting the disease. But I had- n't smoked cigarettes in more than 40 years, and though I spent time in the military when I was younger, I was never exposed to agent orange or other similar materials. It was an open-ended question. But the more I thought about it, the more I fixated on Bovie smoke. Surgical smoke dangers Surgical smoke includes roughly 150 chemicals, including 16 EPA pri- ority pollutants, toxic and carcinogenic substances, viruses and bacte- ria. I carry a list that contains the dozens of toxic chemicals that are contained in the smoke. They include formaldehyde, benzene, hydro- gen cyanide and more. When you ablate tissue, the organisms found within that tissue are also ablated and carried by the smoke. That's why there have been reported cases where gynecologists develop 3 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 • F E B R U A R U Y 2 0 1 8 • SHARP PENCIL Some smoke evacuation pencils attach to your electrocautery device and remove smoke at the point of contact. Hedley Orthpaedic Institute

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