Tune up policies to eliminate surgical smoke hazards

There’s fresh information from regulators and researchers about surgical smoke from laser and electrosurgical procedures, its dangers, and how to make operating rooms (OR) safer for employees exposed to smoke.

The Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) published two articles about surgical smoke risks in its April AORN Journal. The author of one of the articles, Ben Edwards, MS, CLSO, a health physicist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, and a subcommittee member for the American National Standards Institute’s Z136 standard, which covers laser safety, says two things stood out in a survey he and his colleagues conducted involving more than 600 OR nurses in the United States and Canada:

Some surgeons don’t like using smoke evacuation devices during procedures, making compliance with policies requiring this equipment spotty.