A total knee replacement can greatly improve a patient’s quality of life, but first the procedure itself will create nearly 30 pounds of waste, about half of which presents a biohazard and requires energy-intensive treatment for safe disposal.
A cataract surgery can give the gift of clear sight, but only after releasing the equivalent of 181.8 kilograms of carbon dioxide, about the same as a car traveling 315 miles.
Though healthcare is one of the largest sectors in the U.S., its environmental impacts tend to fly under the radar: It accounts for 10 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, and operating rooms generate 20-33 percent of total hospital waste. Researchers are only just beginning to track and understand the sector’s environmental impacts.
Among those researchers are a team at the University of Pittsburgh whose work quantifies the effects of healthcare on the environment, and in this case specifically focuses on a particularly waste-heavy and energy-intensive specialty: orthopedic surgery. The researchers from Pitt’s School of Medicine and the Swanson School of Engineering reviewed existing literature and found that while data is still sparse, efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of orthopedic surgery could make a huge impact.
Read more at University of Pittsburgh
Image: PPE in a medical waste bin (Credit: ADELART / Shutterstock)