Word: anesthesia
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...been awed by the terms 'blood transfusions' and 'blood banks,'" said the clinician gravely. "They have felt them to be either too complicated and impractical or too expensive for routine use." The speaker described how easy it is to obtain blood from a donor under anesthesia, and store it for as long as three weeks. "There is no substitute for whole blood," he concluded. "Proper evaluation and correction of the surgical patient's needs will hasten recovery [and] lower the mortality rate...
...before West Germany's election in 1949, his left leg became seriously diseased and, at the recommendation of General Clay's own chief medical officer, Schumacher gave in at last to the doctor's verdict-amputation. He had lived so long on painkilling drugs that the anesthesia barely worked, but soon after the operation he was puffing a cigarette and joking with the surgeons...
...Fowler quickly examined his patient. Part of the hot blast had traveled along the anesthesia tube: bright red blood from broken vessels in the lungs was filling Patient Cummings' windpipe. The blood was drained off, and a mask was fitted to give artificial respiration. But little more than two hours later, Father Cummings was dead, the victim of the kind of accident every hospital dreads. Explosions of anesthetic gases (in this case, a mixture of nitrous oxide, ether and cyclopropane) happen about once in 75,000 operations, and are almost certain to cause serious injury to the patient...
...Father Cummings lay dying, the U.S. Bureau of Mines, by a coincidence, issued a set of recommendations to reduce the hazard. Wool blankets, plastic sheets and most synthetic fabrics should not be allowed near an anesthesia machine, the bureau said, because of the danger that they will generate static electricity and cause a spark. Cotton should be used instead. Doctors and nurses must not wear wool trousers, nylon gowns, or rubber-soled shoes. Tables, machines and stools should have non-insulating feet, to conduct static electricity to the floor...
Almost all of the bureau's requirements had been met in St. Francis' well-run operating room. The main exception was that the anesthesia machine itself had not been grounded, and on this, some experts violently disagree with the bureau: grounding the machine, they say, may make it behave like a lightning rod. There was nothing to suggest that the Evanston accident had been caused by a spark outside the machine. The explosion had been inside it, and the best evidence was that the spark originated there, too-probably in a valve...