page_title: Operating theater
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Operating theater / History
caption_attribution_description: Advances in surgery, especially in the field of cardiovascular surgery beginning in the 1960’s, made the modern operating room the nexus of the modern hospital. In the years prior to passage of the 1976 Medical Device Amendments there was no field of biomedical engineering, but FDA began surveying the medical device field to identify potential and emerging problems with intraocular lenses, replacement heart valves, and many different kinds of operating room equipment. For more information on FDA History, please visit: www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/default.htm
context_page_description: An operating theater is a facility within a hospital where surgical operations are carried out in an aseptic environment.
  Historically, the term "operating theatre" referred to a non-sterile, tiered theater or amphitheater in which students and other spectators could watch surgeons perform surgery. Contemporary operating rooms are devoid of a theatre setting, making the term "operating theater" a misnomer. There are only two old-style operating theaters left, both of which are preserved as part of museums.
context_section_description: Early operating theatres in an educational setting had raised tables or chairs at the center for performing operations surrounded by steep tiers of standing stalls for students and other spectators to observe the case in progress. The surgeons wore street clothes with an apron to protect them from blood stains, and they operated bare-handed with unsterilized instruments and supplies.
  The University of Padua began teaching medicine in 1222. It played a leading role in the identification and treatment of diseases and ailments, specializing in autopsies and the inner workings of the body.
  In 1884 German surgeon Gustav Neuber implemented a comprehensive set of restrictions to ensure sterilization and aseptic operating conditions through the use of gowns, caps, and shoe covers, all of which were cleansed in his newly invented autoclave. In 1885 he designed and built a private hospital in the woods where the walls, floors and hands, arms and faces of staff were washed with mercuric chloride, instruments were made with flat surfaces and the shelving was easy-to-clean glass. Neuber also introduced separate operating theaters for infected and uninfected patients and the use of heated and filtered air in the theater to eliminate germs. In 1890 surgical gloves were introduced to the practice of medicine by William Halsted. Aseptic surgery was pioneered in the United States by Charles McBurney.
caption: An operating room in the United States, c. 1960. Heart-Lung Machine with rotating disc oxygenator
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