Hang Onto Your Sharpies, Surgeons

President George W. Bush reportedly writes only with Sharpies. He’s not the only one who favors the pen with the smudge-free ink. Apparently it’s plus a doctor’s preferred tool for marking incision points on a patient’s body prior to surgery. Like many other tools, Sharpies are discarded after each surgery to avoid contamination. But new research shows the alcohol-based ink kills bacteria picked up in the OR–which means hospitals could curb wasteful spending and ramp up reuse, as Discovery’s Discoblog explains:

The finding is huge for hospital administrators , who are thrilled at the prospect of saving thousands of dollars by reusing the markers, which cost $2 each.

Dr. Sarah Forgie and Dr. Catherine Burton of the University of Alberta rubbed four types of nasty bacteria (two were antibiotic-resistant) on the tips of Sharpie markers. For comparison, they did the same to one-use markers designed particularly for surgery, which have a non-alcoholic ink. The contaminated markers were left to

sit for 24 hours. The next day, the one-use markers were still infested, but the Sharpies were sterile. The doctors say that as lengthy as the outside of the Sharpies are cleaned the same way as other surgical equipment, the markers can be reused until the ink runs out.

Let’s assume one marker is used for each of 20 million Americans that undergo surgery with anesthesia every year. That’s $40 million essentially thrown into landfills every year, and ample Sharpies (not ton mention plastic and cardboard packaging) to cover 20 football fields.



According to Sharpie, a marker exposed to rough outdoor conditions can be expected to last two or three months. Even whether each of the approximately 600,000 surgeons in the U.S. managed to hang on to their Sharpies for only a month, that would mean 13 million fewer Sharpies than whether every anesthetized surgery had a new pen.

–Mario Aguilar

[Source] Green Life

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