Effect of electrocautery on wound healing in midline laparotomy incisions

Comparison of electrocautery incision with scalpel incision in midline abdominal surgery – A double blind randomized controlled trial

“…Kearns et al [18] and Rappaport et al [19] showed significantly less blood loss during incision in patients undergoing midline laparotomy in the electrocautery group. Kumar et al [20] studied 80 patients undergoing head and neck surgery and found that electrocautery had significantly lower blood loss during incision.…”

Floating Electrode Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma in Air Promoting Apoptotic Behavior in Melanoma Skin Cancer Cell Lines

“…Atmospheric pressure treatments can be separated into two major categories: where temperature is used as means of treatment [36][37][38][39][40], and where active species, radicals, or ultraviolet radiation generated by plasma are used for targeted chemical modification and catalysis [8,10,16,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. Thermal plasmas are widely used in medicine today both in attached arc mode where arc contacts the tissue directly [40,[49][50][51] and in a ''jet'' mode where gas (usually argon) is blown through the plasma but remains at high temperature [36,37,39,52]. Both attached arc and thermal jet are known and used for their ability to rapidly coagulate blood [36-40, 50, 52]; however, they can cause significant thermal tissue desiccation, burning, and eschar formation 1 .…”

Prospective Randomized Control Trial Comparing Diathermy versus Scalpel for Skin Incisions in Patients Undergoing Elective Surgeries

“…However, not all of these experimental studies differentiated between the use of cutting and coagulation modes of electrocautery. The reported effects appeared to be related more to the use of coagulation diathermy [14], [15]. Clinical studies have been conducted to investigate these concerns [3], [16], [17], the largest being a prospective non randomized multicentre trial of 964 patients, published in 2001.This study found no difference in the wound complication rates between cutting diathermy and scalpel [16].…”

“…Clinical studies have been conducted to investigate these concerns [3], [16], [17], the largest being a prospective non randomized multicentre trial of 964 patients, published in 2001.This study found no difference in the wound complication rates between cutting diathermy and scalpel [16]. It could be that cutting diathermy produces heat quickly and causes tissue vaporization, as opposed to the charring and necrosis associated with coagulation diathermy which predisposes to wound complications [13], [14], [18].…”