This article is from in the September 2007 issue of DOTmed Business News. A list of registered users that provide sales & service can be found at the end.

Operating room lights don't usually make headlines. But in July, the lights went out (and back-up generators failed) in the middle of an appendectomy in a small-town hospital in Argentina. Quick-thinking family members of the patient collected cell phones from the waiting room so that surgeons could use the screen displays for light.

It would certainly take a skilled surgeon to work without the accustomed 12,000-plus foot candles worth of light shed by many surgical lighting systems in hospitals. (That would take thousands of cell phones to equal.) In addition to the illumination power from multi-head O/R lighting systems, the quality and color of the light is specifically designed for the application and for surgeons' preferences. For instance, invasive or deep cavity procedures require filtered, high-intensity light.
O/R lights can be ceiling or wall mounted, recessed or mobile. They are paired or in clusters to prevent shadows. The basic design of O/R lights combines the electrical source with a ring for commutators, or rotary switching devices, that are part of the mechanism to maintain contact while the light is swiveled. Brushes convey power from the main stem to the light head. To control heat, some systems include transformers to reduce voltage. Bulbs vary in strength, type and complexity from halogen and LED to older, sealed bulbs not unlike automobile headlights. (One complicated older design included an automatic back-up bulb activated when the main bulb blew out.)




O/R lighting is intense; most surgical lights are 80,000 to 160,000 lux; one lux equals the illumination of a surface one meter away from a candle. It would take hundreds of fluorescent kitchen lights to equal the intensity of O/R lights. And surgical lighting is superior to sunlight since it can be either focusable or fixed in focus. O/R lights also allow selection or adjustment of color and whiteness to improve contrast and vividness of tissue, while reflecting infrared rays and heat away from the patient and surgical team. A state-of-the-art example is Skytron's Aurora LED system which boasts bright, cool, high-intensity optics with color-correct light that surgeons can adjust for color temperature. In addition to Skytron, leading manufacturers and brands of O/R lighting include ALM, DRE, STERIS (which makes Amsco products), Midmark, Burton, Medical Illumination, Castle, Hanaulux (owned by Siemens), and Sunnex, among others.

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