Metrological reliability and electrical safety: A case study on electrosurgical equipment

Abstract

Nowadays more than 10,000 different types of medical devices can be found in an average to large sized hospital. In this way, electrical equipment are being employed in a wide variety of fields in medical sciences. Hospitals and medical centers must ensure that their critical medical devices are safe, accurate, reliable and operating at the required level of performance. According to importance of this matter, periodic verification and calibration of these equipment are necessary. Testing and calibration of equipment ensures accuracy, effectiveness and long life of equipments, which ultimately enables hospitals to achieve the highest degree of quality control. In this study, the metrological reliability and electrical safety of electrosurgical equipment for six hospitals in one of the provinces of Iran was evaluated based on standard tests. Acquired results indicate that tested equipment couldn't completely satisfy national and international standards, which means there is necessity for new and severe regulations on periodic performance verification and quality control program especially for high risk instruments.