Leave the Cysto Cart Behind!

Consult: Difficult catheterization.

This is all too familiar. You try to get a little history from either the ER or primary team and they are often not very helpful. You’re just trying to decide how much gear to grab before you head to the bedside. Will a coude catheter be enough or do you need the scope? Sometimes, I will err on pushing the cysto cart to the bedside more out of superstition, thinking that if I don’t I will end up needing to walk all the way back and get it; but if I make the effort at the beginning then I often times don’t even need the scope.

In short, I hate pushing the cysto cart around the hospital. I have often dreamed of making a technical cysto backpack, stocked with your quiver of catheters and the rest of your supplies. The question has always been: What about the light source?

Well, I think I have found an answer for that. I was at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Section two weeks ago, in New Orleans. (By the way, it was a great meeting and lots of credit to Dr. Raju Thomas who was president of the SESAUA and the folks at WJ Weiser)

In the exhibit hall, I stopped by and visited the Richard Wolf booth. They had a couple of interesting new products, but the one I found the most interesting and applicable to this topic was the “Rover LED Portable Light Source.”

The light source is about the circumference of my thumb and about 5 inches long. It is cordless! It attaches directly onto a cystoscope or ureteroscope. It is rechargeable and I was told that one charge could give you 90 minutes of light. This 3W LED lamp has a reported life of 50,000 hours (all of these specs are based on my conversation with the reps and their web site and brochure).

I am hoping that I can get one loaned or donated to our team so we can demo it in action. If we do, I will upload better pics or video. Maybe the technical cysto backpack will follow.

Note: This blog post was not sponsored by Richard Wolf. I just thought it was a neat technology that I wanted to share.

All the best,
Ian

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