Lighting the way to safer surgery with the Lifebox Light: A high-quality, low-cost surgical headlight for low-resource setting operating rooms
Every year, an estimated 24 million patients are put at risk of serious harm simply because their surgeon lacks the light needed to operate safely.¹
Lifebox and LED optical lighting company COAST are addressing the issue of poor operating room lighting with the Lifebox Light: A durable, affordable headlight suited for use in low-resource operating rooms. The headlight provides over eight hours of high-light intensity operating time.
Poor surgical lighting is a major risk to patient safety, including catastrophic blood loss and organ injury. Surgical providers struggle to perform safe operations due to substandard or broken surgical lighting, power outages, and the absence of functional backup generators, or even a complete lack of surgical quality lighting.
Published research by Lifebox found 80 percent of surgical providers reported inadequate lighting was a safety risk to their patients; nearly half reported frequent power outages affecting their facilities, and almost one in five recounted a direct experience of patient harm as a result.²
Surgeons using the Lifebox Light report improved surgical safety – including better visualization, increased accuracy, confidence, and focus, shorter surgery duration, and a reduction in patient harm.
©Lifebox/Ahmed Jallanzo – Surgeon,Dr. Arthur Jones Wuoh (on right) operates with a new Lifebox Light headlight at C.B. Dunbar Hospital, Liberia
“The best surgeon in the world cannot do good work if he cannot see what he is doing,” said Emmanuel Makasa, an orthopaedic surgeon in Zambia, who at times has had to work using a torch or the light from his mobile phone. “You would never ask a tailor to work in the dark, why would you expect it from a doctor?”
“With the headlight, I can continue to operate and, more importantly, keep my focus during the operation when something happens to the lighting.”Dr. Chihena Banda, surgeon, University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia
Impact of Surgical Lighting on Intraoperative Safety in Low-Resource Settings: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Surgical Providers
Minimum Specifications for a Lifebox Surgical Headlight for Resource-Constrained Settings
The Lifebox Surgical Headlight Project: engineering, testing,
and field assessment in a resource-constrained setting
Exploring the Use of a Fit-for-Purpose Surgical Headlight in Sub-Saharan Africa: Mixed Methods Study
¹ Forrester JA, Torgeson K, Weiser TG. Minimum Specifications for a Lifebox Surgical Headlight for Resource-Constrained Settings. JAMA Surg. 2019;154(1):80–82. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2018.4205
² Forrester, J.A., Boyd, N.J., Fitzgerald, J.E.F. et al. Impact of Surgical Lighting on Intraoperative Safety in Low-Resource Settings: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Surgical Providers. World J Surg 41, 3055–3065 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-017-4293-z
