The patient, during laparoscopic surgery, sustained a burn on her abdomen from an overheated insufflator optitherm heating element (used to warm up co2 as it travels into the abdominal cavity).The patient was assessed by plastic surgery and no interventions needed.Silvadene applied for the superficial burn and as of note, the burn is healing well and no signs of necrosis.Background use: the insufflator provides co2, which passes through a heating module called the optitherm.This is supposed to bring the gas to approximately 98 degrees f before going into the patient.If the gas exceeds 105.8 degrees f, a continuous alarm should sound and the optitherm unit shut off automatically.A symbol for the optitherm on the front panel of the equipment will also light up red.The unit was interrogated by the biomed team and it was verified with a thermometer that the temp module was in fact overheating (thermometer showed 120 degrees f), however, the system did not alarm.We'll do some more troubleshooting tomorrow and see if we can pinpoint the failure (insufflator side, optitherm side, or both).Some notes about this specific insufflator: unit was purchased in 2009 outside of annual maintenance, there have been no issues or corrective action required for this unit, unit is up to date on its preventive maintenance there are no logs or recordings available on the equipment, so, we are not able to check failure points, temperatures, or previous alarms.Fda safety report id # (b)(4).
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