Recovery room nurses may be at risk of exposure to waste anesthesia gas and unaware of the potential health complications and cognitive dysfunction they face, according to a new healthcare safety campaign.

The Invisible Risk initiative, launched by surgical device manufacturer Teleflex Medical, aims to educate surgical professionals about the dangers of anesthetic gases that patients exhale in PACU. The cumulative effect on recovery staff, who often work in front of the patients' mouths where waste gas tends to linger, can potentially cause nausea, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, irritability, sterility, miscarriages, birth defects, cancer, and liver and kidney disease, according to OSHA.

The surgical staff at greatest risk of exposure are those who work in facilities with no automatic ventilation or scavenging systems in the OR, with systems in poor condition, or in recovery rooms where gases exhaled by recovering patients are not properly vented or scavenged, says the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's publication on the hazards of waste anesthesia gases.

NIOSH recommends that facilities improve air quality in recovery areas by installing ventilation systems that circulate and replenish air at least 6 times per hour and conduct a minimum of 2 air changes of fresh air every 60 minutes.

In addition, says NIOSH, facilities should develop monitoring programs that repeatedly measure concentrations of anesthetic gas in the breathing zones of the most heavily exposed workers while they perform their usual tasks.

Daniel Cook