Characterization of Plasma Parameters and Tissue Injury Produced by Plasma Electrosurgical Systems

Jerome Canady, MD, Alexey Shashurin, PhD, Kimberley Wiley, MD, N. J. Fisch, Michael Keidar, PhDy Plasma Electrosurgical Systems

Application of plasma in medicine has a long history and it primarily relies on the thermal effects of plasma. In this respect, heat and high temperature have been utilized in medicine for a long time for the purpose of tissue removal, sterilization, and cauterization. One of the successful applications of thermal plasma is argon plasma coagulation (APC) in which highly conductive plasma allows passing a current through the tissue. APC is being used to cut tissue and, in particular, for endoscopic applications.

Currently plasma-based electrosurgery has been established in many surgical subspecialties. To this end various electrode confgurations have been used, such as a monopolar high frequency probe, a bipolar coaxial head, and side-fre probe. The following important features assure success of the electrosurgery devices: high precision, reproducibility, control of the depth, and coagulation.

In this paper we evaluated the basic plasma properties and injury characteristics produced by the plasma electrosurgical systems SS-200E/Argon 2 and SS-601MCa/Argon 4 of US Medical Innovations. Dependence thermal effects induced in living tissue on operational conditions are analyzed.