Slim spectacles put surgeons at risk

Surgeons who wear fashionable, slimline glasses while they operate could be putting their health and careers at risk.

Waikato Hospital surgical trainee Dr Simon Chong said modern spectacles offered health workers little protection from disease if infected blood splashed in their eyes during operations.

"Fashion is fine outside the operating theatre, but inside there's no place for it," Dr Chong told colleagues at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons annual scientific meeting in Hamilton this week.

Surgeons risked contracting diseases such as HIV-Aids or hepatitis, meaning they would have to stop performing surgery.

Dr Chong asked surgeons and surgical registrars at Waikato Hospital about their experience and found 19 out of 71 had received blood splashes to the eye and two had contracted an illness as a result.

Dr Chong said wearing prescription glasses as eye protection was outdated and dangerous when properly designed safety glasses and face shields were available.

"In the 70s, 80s and early 90s the fashion was for much bigger lenses.

"While they weren't as good as safety glasses, they did cover much of the eye and offered more protection than the slender spectacles today." Dr Chong studied the protective benefits of modern glasses among a group of surgeons and surgical registrars at Waikato Hospital during mock operating procedures.

He measured factors such as head tilt and eye and spectacle dimension, finding in nearly all cases the spectacles failed to provide protection.

Surgeons who used safety glasses, facemasks and shields complained of fogging and poor comfort. Some said they could not wear their spectacles underneath.