Utah hospitals using different anesthesia to help environment
By Dan Evans
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SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) — MountainStar Healthcare hospitals are changing the anesthesia that patients breathe in the operating room to better improve the air that all of us breathe every single day.
Dr. Filip Roos is no stranger to FOX 13 News and makes appearances on Good Day Utah almost every single week, giving advice as MountainStar Healthcare’s Chief Medical Officer.
Before his current role, Dr. Roos was a cardiac anesthesiologist.
He’s always known the anesthesia gases used for patients are ventilated through the roof into the atmosphere but didn’t know one popular anesthetic produces vastly more carbon dioxide than another.
“I was ashamed almost because, you know, I never heard of that during my training,” he explained. “I had never seen that – during my 20-plus years of practice, I didn’t know about it.”
Every hour a patient is anesthetized using desflurane equates to the same emissions as driving 200 or more miles. Meanwhile, the same amount of the anesthetic sevoflurane is equivalent to only driving the average car four miles.
Once he learned of the significant environmental impact, Dr. Roos spearheaded a change at MountainStar facilities.
Now, 11 MountainStar hospitals have adopted the change, with more expansion on the horizon.
Dr. Roos explained the effectiveness and safety between the two medicines are not clinically significant, and the more environmentally friendly option is also less expensive.
“We’re not here just to take care of your broken bones and your heart attacks and in your high blood pressure and diabetes, we ought to be taken care of the air that we breathe, the environment that you live in,” he said.
Researchers are also working on strategies to filter and recycle anesthesia gases, which compounds efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions even more.
“We’ve got to do good for our patients we’ve got to do good for the community,” Roos reflected. “We’re a planet. And we have to be a leader. So I mean, physicians need to take a lead in environmental protection.”
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