According to the 2017 data collected in the Study of Fire Victims in Spain, carried out by the Mapfre Foundation and the Professional Association of Fire Technicians (APTB), 18% of home fires had been caused by electrical failures. This percentage is very similar in other European countries as well as in the US, as equivalent studies carried out in these countries have shown. In many Latin American countries, it is even higher, as such is the case in Argentina, where it reaches the 40%.
Yet, while a home fire is clearly devastating to its occupants, a fire in an operating room or any other type of clinical room is even more dangerous as the odds of fatality skyrocket.
Moreover, the extreme eventuality of a fire is only one of the possibilities originated in the electrical supply that can make the difference between life and death in medical facilities.
A simple oscillation in the electrical load or the momentary interruption of the supply can have disastrous consequences during surgical procedures.
In addition to being highly dangerous for those patients who depend on electronic equipment as vital measures. An example of the latter are the machines that supply and monitor the action of respirators in seriously ill Covid-19 patients.
- Image: Artificial lung ventilation devices.
Therefore, it is absolutely critical to have isolation transformers specially designed to prevent and protect against these eventualities in hospital environments.
The electrical system in clinics and hospitals must be installed in strict compliance with a series of technical standards. Isolation is one of the basic conditions stipulated within these technical standards.
This is where the isolating transformer specially designed for medical use comes in, since an isolated network prevents the occurrence of electric shocks to both medical personnel and patients, but, in addition, this type of transformer ensures the continuity of the electrical supply against what is called the first failure.
The European standard IEC / UNE-EN 61558-2-15 governs in particular the specifications to be followed in the design and installation of transformers dedicated to power IT medical systems, which must be permanently connected to fixed wiring.Some of these specifications determine that:
![[Translate to English:] Equipo robótico de cirugía](/fileadmin/_processed_/b/6/csm_equipo-robotico-cirugia_fa7f2b8c35.jpg "[Translate to English:] Equipo robótico de cirugía")
As technology evolves, its use in medical facilities expands. In the case of operating theaters, this evolution has become a true revolution: Robots to guide probes and forceps in order to achieve less invasive operations, consultation and real time communication monitors for doctors, the retransmission of interventions with multimedia equipment ... are some of the innovations that have been introduced in what have been called smart operating rooms.
In order to withstand this ever-increasing amount of devices and keep hospital environments safe for staff and patients, more than ever medical IT schemes require transformers specially designed for these environments.
At Torytrans we make them available to medical facilities,while continuing to innovate so we can meet the electronic demands of the future.
