EXPLOSIVE ANAESTHETIC

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 149, 26 June 1931, Page 11

EXPLOSIVE ANAESTHETIC

DEATH DURING OPERATION. ETHER-OXYGEN MIXTURE. An inquest was held at Birmingham last month regarding the death of a patient in the general hospital as the result of an explosion during an operation. Evidence was given by an honorary surgeon of the hospital that he was performing an operation on the patient's throat. Jle was using a pencil light which was receiving current from an accumulator. A nurse was holding the light, and lie saw her make the necessary connections with the accumulator and the necessary adjustment to reduce the current. He later took the light from her, and while he was in the act of withdrawing it from the patient’s mouth the explosion occurred. The explosion was deafening and the whole of the apparatus used for the anaesthetic was destroyed. He had his hair singed and the side of his face burned, and there were flames which went up to the ceiliag. Some time after the explosion he examined tho patient, and found a wound in the mouth. The Coroner: Then there must ha\e been also an explosion in the patient's mouth J—Yes. The witness added that he had had two previous experiences of similar explosions, one in a nursing home and the other in the same operating theatre. In both operations ether and oxygen were being used as an anaesthetic. The coroner, summing up, said:“Whatever else nay have been learned, certainly the most important and the most valuable is the knowledge, which is fresh even to experts, that ether ami oxygen together make a highly explosive mixture. What makes it even more important still n tho fact that this mixture is now being used more than ever before.” The jury returned a verdict of “accidental death.’’ It added that tho cause of tho explosion which inflicted fatal injuries was ignition of explosive mixture through defective contact in tho pencil lamp used. It considered the typo of lamp holder unsuitable for use in such operations. Tho hospital authorities had in the circumstances adopted very reasonable precaution