 November 16, 2005
Ketchikan, Alaska - Ketchikan General Hospital installed new state of the art anesthesia machines this week in each of its three operating rooms, and employees are being trained in their use. The Aestiva 5 system, produced by General Electric, is the same technology found in the operating rooms of the Mayo Clinic, Walter Reed Hospital, all the military hospitals, the UCLA Medical Center, Duke University, and Massachusetts General in Boston, to name just a few. The most crucial issue during anesthesia is the ability to ventilate the patient properly. These machines have the ability to ventilate a broad range of patients: infants to very large adults, trauma patients, compromised and routine cases alike. Volume and pressure controls allow for the optimum flow of gases, and the system automatically adjusts for any changes in the patient's lungs throughout the course of surgery. An identical ventilation system is used in the KGH Intensive Care Unit (ICU), so when an ICU patient goes to surgery, the settings on his or her ventilator can be copied to the anesthesia equipment and continued in the operating room. PeaceHealth/KGH has two anesthesiologists on staff, Robert Ford, MD, and Eric Youngstrom, MD, as well as two Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, Janis Rottschafer, CRNA and Elizabeth Bruce, CRNA. Total cost of the new anesthesia equipment is $184,000. PeaceHealth/KGH is a private non-profit health care organization. Therefore after salaries and operating costs are paid each year, any excess funds--the hospital's "bottom line", --are used to purchase and upgrade hospital technology. "We are extremely happy to bring this technology into our community-it's just one more way to help people feel comfortable that they can get excellent health care without traveling away from home," stated Patrick Branco, KGH CEO.
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