Introduction: The risks and leading occupational accidents
that healthcare workers are exposed to include needlestick injury. Most
surgeons and healthcare workers face at least one injury during their
professional life, and therefore, such injuries are an important problem. The
present narrative literature review was carried out to determine situations
that caused needle stick injury in the operating theatre, the precautions taken
to prevent these injuries and to highlight the importance of this issue in the
light of the current literature. In as many as 50% of surgical operations, the
mucus membranes and skin of surgical theatre personnel are in contact with
patient blood. In as many as 15% of operations, needle sticks or cuts may
occur, and the risk increases with procedures involving a high blood loss,
longer procedures and more invasive procedures. Surgeons and primary assistants
incur the greatest risk at 59.1% for operating theatre injuries. The remainder
of injuries are sustained by scrub nurses (19.1%), anaesthesiologists (6.2%),
circulating nurses (6%), medical students (3.1%), attendants (0.8%) and others
(5.7%). The greatest risk-per-needle of sharps injury to the surgeon occurs
with straight suture needles. During the suturing of muscle and fascia with
curved suture needles, 59% of suture needle injuries occur. Routine use of
blunt suture needles and double gloving by surgeons and healthcare workers is
strongly supported for use in the operating theatre as recommended techniques
to reduce sharp injuries. Under-reporting rates among surgeons mean that the
true rate of sharps injuries remains undetermined, resulting in an unquantified
risk to surgeons and, therefore, patients. All healthcare staff should be
updated on hospital policy, and hospitals should consider designing a
simplified method to ease the process of reporting sharps injuries. Although
there is a low risk of transmission of blood-borne viruses with a sharps
injury, the consequences of transmission are high, and the healthcare worker should
report early and practice appropriate precautions.
Author(s) Details
Richard Wismayer
Department of Surgery, Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, Masaka, Uganda,
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Equator University of
Science and Technology, Masaka, Uganda and Department of Surgery, Faculty of
Health Sciences, Islamic University in Uganda, Kampala, Uganda.
Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/aodhr/v9/7026
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