title: The Australian Incident Monitoring Study. Equipment failure: an analysis of 2000 incident reports.
abstract: Of the first 2000 incidents reported to the Australian Incident Monitoring Study, 177 (9%) were due to "pure" equipment failure according to pre-defined criteria. Of these 107 (60%) involved anaesthetic equipment, 42 (24%) involved monitors, 17 (10%) other theatre equipment and 11 (6%) the gas or electricity supply. Ninety-seven (55% of the 177) were potentially life-threatening; of these two-thirds would be detected by the array of monitors recommended by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and all but 9 of the remainder would be handled by application of the crisis management algorithm recommended elsewhere in this symposium. Of the 9 remaining, 2 were electrical shock, 3 overheating of a humidifier or blood warmer, 2 the unavailability of a spare laryngoscope and 1 the consequence of a power failure. Meticulous adherence to the equipment checking and monitoring guidelines of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and application of a suitable crisis management algorithm should protect the patient from potentially life-threatening equipment failure in virtually all cases except electric shock, power failure and overheating of warming devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, University of Adelaide, Australia.
authors.forename: R K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Webb
authors.forename: W J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Klepper
authors.forename: W B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Runciman
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D004868:Equipment Failure / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D012308:Risk Management / Q000379:methods*