You're wearing your seatbelt right? So why not test your endoscopes before you use them?

Back in the early days, somewhere before the seventies, it used to be normal not to wear a seatbelt. People just were not into that "safety first" thing. Almost nobody cared about safety, perhaps some individuals did, but the rest of the world thought it was completely fine to get in your car and drive off with no seatbelt.

Now, think about this for a second, if you where about to tell your friends or family that you are driving in your car every time not wearing your seatbelt... what do you think they would say? ...Funny that a lot of surgeons still use their endoscopes but don't know if it is OK to use them? Especially if you knew there is a new tool around. Now, you're probably wondering what does this has to do with seatbelt's?

Well, let me explain this, seatbelt's are ment to prevent you from something worse to happen. You know by using this safety-measure it can save your life! This is similar to testing endoscopes. All of the minimal invasive surgeries are done with endoscopes. These endoscopes are fragile tubes with rod lenses and glass fibers inside that can break or wear. Broken endoscopes are a real show stopper when not detected before surgery. Most of the time it is already taking a long time before the surgeon takes the decision to replace it, and when he does, it often takes more then 30 min to get a new one. All of this is costing a lot of money and it's resulting in dangerous situations and increasingly more risks for the patient. Ok, so how can we prevent this from happening, you might ask?  

The answer to that is simple, use a safety-measure! Almost every hospital is using endoscopes these days but still a lot of them are not testing endoscopes before they are re-used in surgery, strange right? Especially when you come to think that there is a new test-tool called "ScopeControl" to check your endoscopes fully automatic in about 1 minute! Fits right into the workflow of the hospitals and is really easy to use. Hospitals that do use ScopeControl can change their service contracts with their endoscopes suppliers and save costs. But the real game changer is reducing delay's in surgery and minimize risks for the patients. Sounds like a new hero in town I hear you thinking! And you are right! If we were all testing endoscopes before they are used in surgery it will save us millions of dollars in healthcare and it would make it a lot more safer as well.

So, when are you going to wear your seatbelt?