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Problem:
Surgeons, like most of us, have a tendency towards being lazy or bloody-minded at times. Small scalpels are easier to use, and once a surgeon has cut back the fried chicken layer and exchanged a larger scalpel for a smaller one he's naturally inclined to stick with it.
If he wants to
work with cartilage / gristle, that's fine. He can keep cutting with the same little blade. 99.5% of the time. If you are the unlucky patient, he'll be overloading the blade, it'll snap, the disconnected end will slip sideways into something important, and the other end will fly with all the force he was using to embed broken scalpel into something you wanted to keep intact.
Cutting to the heart of the matter (but hopefully not with a snapped blade); surgeons using undersized blades for heavy work is a really bad idea.
Solution:
A snapped scalpel is much less serious if it it snaps under low load as it is easier to control and has less force behind it to do damage. Therefore, scalpels should have pre-cut fracture lines with nice gentle curves designed for failure at much lower forces than the current blades fail at.
It will lead to an increase in snapped blades temporarily, but as surgeons get used to having to always overengineer their blade gauge the broken blade incidence will fall back to present levels. The lasting difference will be that breaks will be altogether less damaging altogether.
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Annotation:
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I don't think that weakening surgical scalpels would be a very good thing to do. |
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Sounds vaguely governmental--solving a problem that doesn't exist by creating that very problem. |
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Speaking as someone more likely to be
a patient than a surgeon, I'm altogether
for surgeons not breaking off knives
inside of me. Dunno about deliberately
weakening the blades altogether, but if
that's the only way to get you bastards
to just use the right tool for the
job...then I'm altogether neutral,
leaning towards [-]. Altogether, it
seemed like a good idea when I started
the anno and then I changed my mind.
Altogether. |
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I don't mind having bloody-minded surgeons, just so long as they're cross-matched. |
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Put a torque-limiting pivot just behind the blade; press too hard and it unlatches, thus limiting the force that can be applied. The blade doesn't brake, the device can be reset quickly. |
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I was just going to mention torque limiting. Too slow. |
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Torque limiting is a better idea, I agree. The only downside, compared to the original idea, is an increased cost of production. |
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Hell with cost of production when it comes down to little razor sharp metal shards in vital organs. |
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I did not realize that snapped scalpel blades was a common problem. The flying blade part of the problem could be solved by having a plastic coating on the flat metal of the blade. It would be analogous to the plastic layer in automobile windows that prevent glass shards from flying everywhere. |
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Do we have any numbers on how often
this actually happens? |
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Until stats show otherwise, I don't believe this is a problem. And regardless, I don't believe this is a solution. [-] |
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Simpler solution. On the back edge of the
handle, near the front where the forefinger
rests, add a sharpish point. The surgeon
will then only be able to press so hard
before pricking himself. Heavier-duty
scalpels have blunter points, allowing the
surgeon to press harder. |
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// able to press so hard before pricking himself // |
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Yes, but by that time he might have pierced his surgical glove and compromised asepsis. |
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Better to have a srain guage in the scalpel which links back to as small shock device; press hard, get a mild tingle, press too hard and it hurts. |
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Most (though not all) doctors are sadists rather than masochists, so this should be reasonably effective. |
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My plumber knows when to use needle-nose pliers and when to use channel locks. |
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Find a competent surgeon. |
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Just make the scalpel of dull plastic, thus rendering it perfectly safe (-) |
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