No study has examined infection rates in "clean" cases following "dirty" cases. This study evaluated patients undergoing elective primary total joint arthroplasties performed in operating rooms following cases of known infection for development of postoperative infection. A retrospective review of all elective primary total joint arthroplasties performed over a 5-year period at our institution ...

Background and Objectives: Fire is an inherent and permanent risk in the operating room and the prevention of it in the operating room require awareness of risks and effective communication between its staffs. Thus the purpose of this study is to determine the awareness and the practice of the operating room staff about fire prevention and to determine the effectiveness of safe...

This article describes the author’s experience of using TEX for typesetting the Anaesthesia Record as part of an automated data-collection system developed for use in the operating theatre.

BACKGROUND The rate of surgical site infections (SSI) is strongly influenced by operating room quality, which is determined by the structural features of the facility and its systems and by the management and behavior of healthcare workers. The aim of the present study was to assess microbial contamination in the operating room during hip- and knee-replacement procedures, the behavior of operat...

Imagine a black and white photograph. The date is 1957. The setting is an operating room at a Baltimore hospital. There is no operating table and a man lies on the floor. The man, a volunteer, is pharmacologically paralyzed and sedated. Several people are gathered around the room, some doctors, several boy scouts and other people from the community. Everyone's attention is focused on one of the...

In this paper I will describe my findings from studying during last year the use of information technology in operating theatres. Based on these findings I will present focus shift analysis as a method for analyzing complex interaction, and discuss how the use of speech commands within the operating theatre are able to address some of the breakdown found with the focus shift analysis.

The purpose of this report is to discuss management of operating room personnel who have had occupational exposure to blood and other body fluids that might contain hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I). HBV postexposure prophylaxis includes starting hepatitis B vaccine series in any susceptible ...

In this study 214 strains of Staphylococcus aureus were isolated from clinical specimens on the surgical ward from 1983 to 1988 and in addition, 62 airborne strains were collected in the operating room. Highly methicillin-resistant strains of S.aureus (H-MRSA, MIC greater than 100 micrograms/ml) not detected in 1983 showed a significant increase in frequency by 1987 accounting for about 60% of ...