Surgery a Noisy Business, Say Acoustics Experts

June 20, 2006--Researchers studying noise levels in the operating room have concluded that surgery "is a noisy business."

"These average sound levels resemble those one would expect in a busy restaurant or just 300 feet away from a busy highway," said Jonathan Kracht, Ilene Busch-Vishniac and James West, researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, who led the study. They reported these findings at the 151st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Providence, R.I.

There is very little reliable information on how loud operating rooms can get during surgery. This information could help determine how noise during surgeries might negatively affect hearing and communication in the operating room.

The researchers measured sound levels in 38 operating rooms in which surgeries from all branches of medicine were taking place. The researchers were discreet. "Surgeons and staff generally were not aware of noise monitoring," the researchers write. No attempt was made to control conversation or other activities during surgery.

So what did the researchers find? After gathering and calculating the sound levels before, during, and after surgery in each operating room, the researchers arrived at an average. Pediatric orthopedic surgeries had the lowest average levels, while plastic surgeries had the highest. The levels' overall range went from 57.9 to 66.9 dB(A), a decibel scale that takes into account the range of frequencies that humans are most capable of hearing.

So does this restaurant-level noise pose any risk? While there is no indication that the sound pressure levels found in the operating room are sufficiently high to cause hearing damage to patients, there is cause for concern for the surgical staff members, the researchers say. Surgeons and their staff, they report, "are routinely exposed to such high noise levels [and] there is some likelihood that it will cause a cumulative degradation of hearing in these professionals."

There is also another concern, they say; it is likely that the noise in the operating room significantly degrades speech communication, a worry given the need for clear oral communication between members of the surgical team. However, in other work, the researchers are introducing ways to reduce noise in all parts of a hospital, and it can be done, they say, with existing technology.

On the Web:

Noise in the Operating Room, by Jonathan Kracht, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, and James West (a lay-language paper on the ASA meeting's Web site)

Contact:

Ilene Busch-Vishniac
Johns Hopkins University
ilenebv@jhu.edu

Chris Rowe
American Institute of Physics
Tel: 301-209-3136
crowe@aip.org