Machines Used in Operating Room & Their Uses

   Today, operating rooms in major hospitals throughout the industrialized world are equipped with a wide range of specialized machinery designed to achieve a single set of goals: assisting the surgical team to execute the operation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Medical technology also plays a crucial role in patient safety by monitoring vital signs (body temperature, blood pressure and respiration), warning of any impending complications, and helping to head them off before they become life-threatening. According to the Encyclopedia of Surgery, machines used in operating rooms can be grouped into 4 main categories.


      Emergency and Life Support Equipment
      When the heart has to be stopped during surgery or arrests unexpectedly on the operating table, the patient becomes unable to breathe without help so a heart-lung bypass machine, also known as a cardiopulmonary bypass pump, is used to remove carbon dioxide from the blood and replace it with the oxygen needed to sustain life. An intra-aortic balloon pump helps reduce strain on the heart by boosting blood flow to coronary arteries while the patient's vital signs are continuously monitored and displayed on the machine's console. A ventilator (or respirator) is also kept nearby to control or stabilize breathing. Infusions of saline, anesthesia, blood and drugs are delivered by a programmable pump, the bags of fluids suspended from an intravenous pole beside the operating table. In case vital signs stray into the danger zone, a portable cart, called a crash, resuscitation or code cart, stocked with emergency resuscitation equipment, is always close at hand.


      Monitoring Equipment
      Interconnected monitoring machines, all connected to the patient with electrodes and sensors, include an electrocardiogram (ECG) to monitor the heart's electrical activity, a pulse oximeter taped to a finger or toe to keep track of levels of blood oxygen, and an intracranial pressure monitor to gauge the pressure of fluids on the brain.


      Diagnostic Equipment
      During surgery, especially of the chest cavity, additional X-rays may reveal more than earlier radiography was able to capture. In case this becomes necessary, a mobile X-ray unit powered by a battery-operated generator is kept close to the bedside.


      New Surgical Technologies  
      The ideal of all surgery is to get the required job done with minimal trauma to the patient's body and, to that end, new ways of reducing unnecessary risk are constantly being devised and perfected. During some operations, especially very complicated ones, a surgeon may now sit at a console a few feet away from the operating table and guide robotic arms holding tiny cameras or instruments while studying magnified 3-D images of the process as they are projected on a screen. "Scalpels of light," laser beams, may be used to burn, cut or destroy diseased tissue, seal off blood vessels or remove tumors. The laparascope is a fiber-optic instrument similar to a telescope but only about as big around as a fountain pen; increasingly, laparoscopic surgery, also known as minimally invasive surgery (MIS), is replacing techniques that used to require big incisions.