FLOODLIT WOUNDS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23748, 21 September 1942, Page 6

FLOODLIT WOUNDS

USE OF NEW SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS L /NDON, July 7. New surgical instruments which “floodlight” the interior of the body are being used by some Army surgeons in the Middle East. Equipped with a set of these unbreakable luminous instruments, surgeons can perform field operations under a tree or a lean-to shelter, without worrying about aircraft overhead and with better lighting in the wound than in an operating theatre. Made of a transparent plastic material like glass, which transmits light round corners, does not conduct heat, and can be thrown on the ground without breaking, the instruments are made in about 30 different shapes, to suit any kind of wound or operation. Even where there are i o right-angled bends in the transparent instrument, the light rays travel drwn to the frosted tip and flood the wound with a cold, shadowless light, however inaccessible the place may be. Blood does not easily congeal on the instrument, as it does with ordinary ligb ig apparatus.

About 30 different instruments are available, but there are three or four dual-purpose models which are sufficient for ordinary diagnostic and surgical work in the field. A set of these, together with a small electric accumulator, costs about £l2 and many surgeons in the fighting services have bought them out of their own pockets, so useful have the proved in action. Some of Britain’s greatest surgeons are now using these instruments for wounds which cannot be seen 'into by ordinary operating theatre lighting. Similar instruments have been made in other countries for some years, but they had the disadvantage of losing their shape in sterilising. The new instruments, however, are made of a methyl methacrylate plastic specially developed by British chemists, which will stand any amount of boiling without losing shape.