Removing smoke without ire

Founded on the inventions of Neil Warren, manager of the Wales Institute of Minimal Access Therapy (WIMAT), the group believes that in the next few years its latest instruments will change the way doctors perform keyhole surgery on the abdomen.

Dominic Griffiths, director of the group, said that surgeons are currently faced with a range of difficulties in performing these operations, including smoke contamination (caused by electrosurgical ablation), traumatic tissue removal and a cooling down of the body cavity. ’A lot of these problems can be overcome using better-designed instruments,’ explained Griffiths. ’For instance, smoke filling the operating area is a common problem for surgeons during laparoscopy. Existing technology sucks the smoke out of the body using a vacuum. This not only cools the body down, but also dries it out.’

Griffiths added that an alternative would be to let the smoke escape through incisions in the body. However this can contaminate the operating theatre and is not ideal for longer operations, which can take up to four to six hours.