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Blunt suture needles advocated as safe, effective: American College of Surgeons issues statement in effort to improve safety of physicians and patients.(Gynecology)
A new statement from the American College of Surgeons endorses the universal adoption of blunt suture needles for all potential applications in the operating room.
"There are surgeons who don't even know that blunt sutures exist for fascial and muscle closure," said Lena M. Napolitano, M.D., a surgeon who chairs the ACS Committee on Perioperative Care, which assembled the statement. "What we are proposing is that this should become the standard. Rather than using sharp needles to close the fascia and muscle, we should convert to using blunt suture needles because that's the safest for our health care workers in the OR."
Released in August, the statement (see www.facs.org) comes on the heels of mounting research that demonstrates how the OR lags behind other areas of the hospital in implementing safety-engineered devices required by the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000. According to a study of percutaneous injuries that occurred at various hospitals in the United States between 1993 and 2002, a 38.1% reduction in injuries was seen in patient rooms, compared with only a 5.7% drop in the OR.
The study, conducted by the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center at the University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, also found that while injury rates from hollow-bore needles declined by 32.8% between 1993 and 2002, injury rates from suture needles increased by 26.8% over that same period.
"There has been a sea change of progress in [needlestick safety], but most of it has been focused on hollow-bore needles such as syringes, blood-drawing devices, and IV equipment," said Janine C. Jagger, Ph.D., professor of research and internal medicine at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and director of the International Healthcare Worker Safety Center. "The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000 requires employers to purchase devices with needlestick prevention features on them. But it seems as though the operating room is the last frontier."
Dr. Jagger called the new ACS statement on blunt suture needles "an extremely important step" in improving safety for surgeons, health care workers, and patients. "What we do in America has a huge impact elsewhere in the world," she said, noting that sharp suture needles are the No. 2 cause of needlestick injuries in the hospital setting, right behind syringes. "There are countries that use American standards to set their own standards. Surgical ...
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