Fires on the operating field are dangerous to patients and providers. The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority did an analysis of the reports of surgical fires in its database. Analysts identified reports of fires submitted over seven years that occurred in the operating room on the surgical field and involved combustion resulting from a combination of heat, oxygen, and fuel. Seventy events that met the analysts' definition of fires on the operating field were reported in the seven years between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2011. Over the past four years for which data was available, the rate of surgical fires has varied from 0.63 per 100,000 operations (1 per 157,545 operations) in the academic year 2007-2008 to 0.32 per 100,000 operations (1 per 309,305 operations) in the academic year 2010-2011. One-third of the reported events indicated harm to the patient. Risk to providers, rather than patients, was cited in 6% of reports. Surgical fires remain a significant enough risk to justify use of a Fire Risk Assessment Score and adherence to the recommendations of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Task Force on Operating Room Fires and those of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation.
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