General Surgical
Instruments
introduction
The choice of incision is based on
easy access to the diseased organ and the positioning of the patient also
provides a similar advantage. Thus the operation list sent by the surgical team
is the source of information on all the basic issues and identifies for the OT
staff its work for the following day. The procedure to be preformed identifies
the instrument requirements including those for anesthesia.
GENERAL
SURGical INSTRUMENTS
In this chapter some selected instruments
are presented as sets. They are put together for specific operations, putting
together of these sets insures:
• That
instruments required will be available during the operation.
• That
sets for all the operations can be prepared and autoclaved for a given list on
a given day.
• Hospital
administrators can assess how many operations can be undertaken without
recycling instruments.
• Hospital
administrators can foresee the need for procurement when new procedures are
added to the existing list at a hospital.
• OT
staff in charge of different theaters should be able to identify and put
together the required sets on receiving the lists for work for each day and
send them for autoclaving.
It
will be our objective in this chapter to provide an overall plan of
classification of instruments and line drawings to aid easy recall and
identification of these instruments.
Broadly
speaking surgical instruments are used for:
• Surgical
procedures (operations).
• Investigations
and diagnosis.
Classification
The surgical instruments used for
operation are broadly classified as:
• Sharp
cutting instruments.
• Dissecting
forceps.
• Hemostats
(artery forceps).
• Tissue
forceps.
• Gastric
+ intestinal clamps.
• Needle
holders.
• Suture materials.
• Tubes,
catheters and drains.
• Retractors.
• Dilators.
• Special
instruments.
• Diagnostic
instruments.
The
other instruments that are in use for surgical patients but have not been
included here are:
• Monitoring
equipments Monitors for BP Cardioscopes.
• Life
support equipment.
• Diathermy
(Discussed in Chapter 2).
• Cryosurgery
(Discussed in Chapter 2).
• Autoclaves
(Discussed in Chapter 1).
• Ultrasound.
• CT
scanners, etc.
These
instruments not discussed are of great importance in surgical practice but have
not been included because of shortage of space. They are also in the charge of
departments that provide support to the surgical services, i.e. Intensive Care
Units and imaging departments. A special effort should be made to acquire a
working knowledge of these equipments.
Sharp
Instruments
Scalpel
A scalpel is a small knife used in
surgical operations. In surgical practice the term knife refers to a cutting
tool other than a scalpel and is usually reserved for amputation knives and
skins grafting knives which are substantially larger than scalpels. The
scalpels in use are:
• Scalpel
(Fig. 8.1)
• Scalpel
handle (Fig. 8.2A and B)
• Scalpel
blades (Fig. 8.3)
Scalpels
are used for incising skin and deeper structures to obtain access. They are
very sharp and thus cause minimum injury to incised tissue. Disposable separate
blades are sterile when packed and thus require no autoclaving thus there is no
loss of sharpness.
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