This use is associated with a significant number of adverse incidents including failure of leads, probes or similar accessories, burns to patients or staff and smoke inhalation or fires. This special edition of One Liners therfore attempts to draw to the attention of users some of the burning issues, and to highlight the advice on the safe use of diathermy that has already been issued. There are numerous reports that related to the malfunction of diathermy accessories such as leads, electrodes and footswitches. Many of these result from damage due to poor storage or unsuitable maintenance.
Prticular problems are faulty leads and the ingress of fluids to footswitches.
Accessories must be regularly checked and discarded if damaged. Records of the numbers of sterilisation cycles should be maintained where appropriate. Careful storage is essential to ensure that equipment continues to function correctly throughout its product life. Diathermy can affect the performance and lead to significant detrimental effects in patients that have a cardiac pacemaker. Damage to the pulse generator, reprogramming, changes in the captive threshold and ventricular fibrillation can all be induced by diathermy.