Safety of Electronic Home Monitoring Devices in the Operating Room

Abstract

Due to increasing financial burden on the penal systems to keep offenders in the prisons, there have been increasing uses of electronic home monitoring devices to place “less risky” offenders under house arrest. These devices on several occasions have malfunctioned and caused electrical harm to wearers in cases of power surges and lightning strikes. Due to its relative novelty, there is no consensus or guidelines in the literature on how to manage patients with electronic home monitoring devices in surgical cases using monopolar electrocautery which can deliver charges that could potentially cause harm or malfunction of the monitoring system. Recently, we encountered a patient who needed bilateral cranioplasty procedures but had been placed on house arrest unbeknownst to us. During the surgery, we packed several gauzes in between the patient and the device and placed the electrocautery pad on the contralateral leg with power set at 20 MHz. The surgery was performed without any adverse outcome and the patient did well after surgery.