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Anesthetic machine)
Anaesthetists use anaesthetic machines to support the administration of anaesthesia.
The machine includes the following components:
- connections to piped hospital oxygen, air, and nitrous oxide
- back-up gas cylinders of oxygen, air, and nitrous oxide
- flow meters for oxygen, air, and nitrous oxide
- one or more anaesthetic vaporisers to accurately add volatile anaesthetics to the fresh gas flow
- a ventilator
- physiological monitors to monitor patients' heart rate, ECG, blood pressure and oxygen saturation (additional monitors are generally available to monitor temperature, central venous pressure , pulmonary artery capillary wedge pressure , cardiac output, etc)
Based on experience gained from analysis of mishaps, the modern anaesthetic machine includes several safety devices, including:
- hypoxic mixture alarms
- ventilator disconnect alarms
- interlocks between the vaporisers preventing inadvertent administration of more than one volatile agent concurrently
- alarms on all the above physiological monitors.
There is generally a small work bench built into the machine where airway management equipment is kept within ready reach of the anaesthetist.
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Last updated: 05-21-2005 05:15:53