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Outpatient Surgery E-Weekly

Contact Congress Over Drug Shortage Issues

A Kentucky congressman is urging surgical facilities to contact their members of Congress and request that they sign his letter demanding changes to...

N.J. Posts ASC Inspection Reports Online

State and federal inspection reports of New Jersey's ASCs are now available online, giving patients an opportunity to make more informed choices abo...

Are Opioids Necessary?

While it's not always practical, or even possible, to eliminate opioids from your post-op pain management regiment, reducing their use in favor of n...

Archive > December, 2009 Vol. X, No. 12

Are Your ORs Smoke Free?

They should be. Here's expert advice to overcome the 3 obstacles you're likely to encounter.

Kay Ball, PhD, RN, CNOR, FAAN

Perioperative nurses experience some respiratory ailments at twice the rate of the general population. That's according to my PhD research and random sampling of AORN members. Consider that inhaling smoke generated from the destruction of a single gram of tissue during electrosurgery is equivalent to smoking 6 cigarettes in 15 minutes. Nurses exposed to surgical plumes have reported eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, nausea, dizziness, excessive coughing, fatigue, skin irritation and increased allergies. The reasons to properly evacuate harmful surgical smoke are obvious, so why don't more nurses and surgeons take the threat of surgical smoke seriously?

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