title: Technical note: electrosurgery active lead failures.
abstract: A cause of electrosurgical burns in surgical procedures is faulty active leads. A survey of faults and modes of failures are reported. The design of a meter is given for use by a sterilizing department to enable leads to be checked. Using the criterion of two times the original resistance, 35 cables were found to be defective out of a population of about 200 cables. About half of these cables transmitted radio frequency (RF) power inefficiently: often power was intermittent and hot spots would develop. The commonest mode of failure was a break between the socket and the wire at the forceps end. Rejection criteria are reviewed and we suggest a resistance less than 0.3 omega.
authors.affiliation: West of Scotland Health Boards, Department of Clinical Physics and Bio-Engineering, Lanarkshire, UK.
authors.forename: S R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Docker
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Railton
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nieman
mesh_terms: D004553:Electric Conductivity; D004559:Electric Wiring; D004598:Electrosurgery / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004868:Equipment Failure; D004869:Equipment Safety