Years ago, going into surgery was a much riskier prospect than it is today. Even as late as the 1950s and early 1960s, the risk of an accidental explosion due to the use of anesthetic gases such as cyclopropane was significant enough that anything which might cause a spark of static electricity, such as woolen socks, was banned from operating rooms.
Today, thanks to advances in areas such as preoperative testing, anesthesia, surgical technique, and postoperative care, operations that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago are now performed on a daily basis in hospitals around the country. Unfortunately, one of the former risks associated with surgery is making a comeback of sorts: fire in the operating room, resulting in burn injury to the patient.
Surgical fires are, for the most part, not the anesthetic gas and oxygen-fueled flash flames that were once common in mid-twentieth century surgical rooms.The widespread use of nonflammable anesthetic gases and intravenous anesthetic agents has essentially eliminated the most dangerous source of fire in the surgical suite. However, this has created another often overlooked scenario where both patients and surgical staff are at risk of potentially serious burn injuries.
Many surgeries, particularly plastic or reconstructive procedures that once required at least an overnight stay in a hospital, are now routinely performed on an outpatient basis in a dedicated ambulatory surgical center. Since many such procedures require that the patient’s skin be in as natural a state as possible, many centers now routinely use an alcohol-based skin disinfectant. If the fumes from these disinfectants are not quickly removed via air recirculation systems, they may accumulate and, if a spark is created by one of the surgical devices commonly in use to control bleeding, the alcohol vapors can ignite and cause burns to the patient’s exposed skin.
Although such accidents are infrequent enough that their occurrence usually rates at least a mention in the local news media, a 2007 study by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority was used by the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) to estimate that there was a likelihood of 550 to 650 such fires each year. This data was concerning enough to prompt The Doctor’s Company, the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurance company, to cite them as a part of its “Fire Safety In the Surgical Suite” physician education program.
Given that very few potentially flammable or explosive anesthetic gases are in routine use, any thermal injury to a surgical patient is now presumed to be caused by fumes from alcohol-based skin or instrument disinfectant solutions. Therefore, the responsibility for surgical fires can be laid at the feet of the surgeon performing the procedure (the “Captain of the ship” principle). Since thermal burns acquired in this manner are entirely preventable with the use of a non-alcohol based solution, such injuries represent a very strong argument for medical malpractice, and expose both the operating physician and the operators of the surgical suite (either hospital-sponsored or privately-owned) to significant liability.
If you have been injured as the result of a surgical fire, contact a Charlottesville VA medical malpractice attorney today. You may have options to pursue a medical malpractice claim to help compensate you for your losses.
Thanks to our friends and contributors from Martin Wren, P.C. for their insight into medical malpractice cases.