Evaluation of a prototype surgical swab washer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of a prototype surgical swab washer for intraoperative blood cell salvage.
IRAS ID
163511
Contact name
Faye O'Keeffe
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospital of South Manchester
Research summary
Intra-operative Cell Salvage (ICS) is an established technique which enables red blood cells lost during surgery to be captured and returned to the patient. ICS has widely recognised clinical and cost benefits compared to the use of donor blood. During ICS, blood lost during surgery is collected from the surgical field using a suction device and directed to the ICS system which recovers and washes the healthy red blood cells and packages them for transfer back into the patient.
During many surgical procedures, approximately 40% of blood lost during surgery is mopped up in surgical swabs. Some hospitals manually wash these blood soaked swabs in saline to release the red blood cells trapped in the swabs so that they can be recovered by the ICS system. Manual swab washing has been shown to increase red blood cell recovery during surgery by up to 30% but it is a slow, laborious and dirty process which is not favoured by the theatre staff who have to undertake it. SwabTech Ltd has developed a prototype swab washing machine that automatically and consistently extracts blood from surgical swabs with minimal operator intervention. Laboratory tests have proven that this device results in superior red blood cell yields compared to manual swab washing. In this study we wish to evaluate the prototype swab washer in a real life operating theatre environment. The results of this study will further inform the design of the swabwasher and enable SwabTech to obtain initial data on the benefits of automatic swab washing compared to manual swab washing.
REC name
London - Riverside Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/1704
Date of REC Opinion
22 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion