| rdfs:comment | - application of a high-frequency electric current to biological tissue as a means to cut, coagulate, desiccate, or fulgurate tissue. Its benefits include the ability to make precise cuts with limited blood loss. Electrosurgical units are frequently used during surgical operations helping to prevent blood loss in hospital operating rooms or in outpatient procedures. Electrosurgery is commonly used in dermatological, gynecological, cardiac, plastic, ocular, spine, ENT, orthopedic, urological, neuro- and general surgical procedures.
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| abstract | - application of a high-frequency electric current to biological tissue as a means to cut, coagulate, desiccate, or fulgurate tissue. Its benefits include the ability to make precise cuts with limited blood loss. Electrosurgical units are frequently used during surgical operations helping to prevent blood loss in hospital operating rooms or in outpatient procedures. In electrosurgical procedures, the tissue is heated by an electric current. Although electrical devices may be used for the cauterization of tissue in some applications, electrosurgery is usually used to refer to a quite different method than electrocautery. The latter uses heat conduction from a probe heated by a direct current (much in the manner of a soldering iron), whereas electrosurgery uses alternating current to directly heat the tissue itself. Often electrosurgery is mistakenly referred to as diathermy. Unlike Ohmic heating by electric current passing through the conductive tissue in conventional electrosurgery, diathermy means dielectric heating, produced by rotation of molecular dipoles in high frequency alternating electric field. This effect is most widely used in microwave ovens which operate at GHz frequencies. Electrosurgery is commonly used in dermatological, gynecological, cardiac, plastic, ocular, spine, ENT, orthopedic, urological, neuro- and general surgical procedures. Electrosurgery is performed using an Electrosurgical Generator (also referred to as Power Supply or Waveform Generator) and a handpiece including one or several electrodes, sometimes referred to as an RF Knife. The apparatus when used for coagulation in surgery is still often referred to informally by surgeons as a "Bovie," after the inventor.
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