Editor's Note Optimizing patient positioning can help reduce the risk of surgical site infections due to airborne contaminants in positive-pressure ORs, according to a study published August 12 in Nature: Scientific Reports. Maintaining higher pressure than adjacent spaces prevents entry of contaminants from environments external to the OR. For this…

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Editor's Note The Red Cross is reporting a 25-percent drop in its national blood inventory due to hot weather a month after the American Hospital Association (AHA) warned about the impact of cyberattacks on critical supplies at hospitals. According to an August 6 report in The Hill, heat-related challenges have…

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Editor's Note A study published August 6 in the journal Surgery highlights the impact of structured debriefing tools on improving communication and patient safety in the OR during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducted over three years, the study implemented a new electronic health record (EHR) module to document surgical debriefings and…

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Editor's Note The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated recalls of Medtronic’s NIM Vital Nerve Monitoring System and Smith Medical’s CADD-Solis Ambulatory Infusion Pumps as Class 1, the most severe category indicating serious risk of injury or death. Reports of false negative responses prompted Medtronic to recall the nerve…

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Editor's Note An electronic health record (EHR)-based nudge could significantly reduce low-value axillary surgeries in older women with early-stage breast cancer, researchers reported July 17 in JAMA Surgery. Conducted across eight clinical settings, the initiative significantly cut the rates of low-value sentinel lymph node biopsies (SLNB) by nearly 50% over…

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Editor's Note Responding to and recovering from data breaches in healthcare is more expensive than any other industry, according to a report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute. Healthcare Dive reported on the results August 1. According to that article, the $9.8 million average cost for a breach this year…

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Editor's Note Automated surgical video analysis could enhance evaluation of an OR team’s nontechnical skills, according to a study published July 31 in JAMA Network Open. Conducted between January 2021 and May 2022, the cross-sectional study involved 30 cardiovascular surgical teams at a teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Using OpenPose,…

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Editor's Note Hospitals and health systems have largely returned to normal operations in the wake of a global IT outage caused by a faulty update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, according to a July 29 article in Becker’s Health IT. The outage, which began July 18, resulted in many health systems'…

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Although I am not a healthcare professional, working for OR Manager offers a peek behind the curtain. What I have learned so far has left me feeling a bit conflicted. When I took this job back in December, I assumed the hospital ecosystem was driven entirely by the Hippocratic Oath.…

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One privilege of living at this time in history is the availability of choice, especially for health and surgical needs. Those who make healthcare their business understand this as well. According to Tanna et al, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are spreading to rural areas, hospitals are creating hybrid outpatient surgery…

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