Q&A: Diamond knife subscription service aims to reduce waste from cataract surgery
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Key takeaways:
- MicroSurgical Technology offers a diamond knife subscription service.
- One of EyeSustain’s main initiatives is to collaborate with industry to improve sustainability.
For the multi-society sustainability initiative EyeSustain, one of its biggest goals has been to collaborate with industry to reduce waste and ophthalmology’s carbon footprint.
Earlier this year, a collaboration with MicroSurgical Technology (MST) inspired the launch of MST’s diamond knife subscription service.
Healio spoke with EyeSustain editorial board member Emily M. Schehlein, MD, about the program and how it might help improve sustainability in ophthalmology.
Healio: What are the goals of this subscription initiative?
Schehlein: Climate change is the biggest health threat facing humanity right now, and the global health care system produces 4.4% of global greenhouse gases. In ophthalmology in particular, we do the most commonly performed surgery in the entire world, cataract surgery. Worldwide, 25 million to 30 million surgeries are performed every year, so any small change that we make in the way we do cataract surgery has the potential to have a huge impact on the amount of waste that is produced by surgery.
Our goal is for physicians to work with members of industry to reduce waste, and there are so many different ways to do that. For example, we can move toward more sustainable packaging of surgical instruments, tubing and phaco packs, among many other things. We can also transition from paper instructions for use to electronic instructions for use for materials used in cataract surgery. In this case, we are transitioning from multiple single-use devices to a subscription service for a reusable device.
We know that sometimes, even in a single surgery center, there are thousands of individual units of single-use devices used per week. The goal here is to reduce waste and work together with industry toward a common goal.
Healio: How did MST’s subscription service come about, and why is a program like this a good fit for the company’s devices?
Schehlein: As part of EyeSustain, one of our biggest goals is to work with industry to make sustainable changes. Our industry partners have been so welcoming to us in terms of creating programs and working to reduce waste and become more sustainable. This arose from that collaboration with EyeSustain.
We want to do things that make sense from a sustainability perspective, but we understand that industry needs to do things that make sense from a business perspective. In this case, this is both. With a subscription service, we are reducing the number of single-use devices that we are using, and then we are also allowing people to use a product — a diamond knife — that may have previously been too costly or the upkeep too onerous for certain surgical centers.
Surgical centers and surgeons can sometimes be hesitant to make a change like this because it is expensive to buy diamond knives and pay for their upkeep. This program takes away that hesitancy because there is less risk involved. You are paying a flat rate per month so that you can use these knives, and then MST will take care of the servicing.
I think it works for the surgeons who want to be less wasteful but may not have tried diamond knives before or were hesitant to make a financial commitment.
Healio: How will this help with sustainability in ophthalmology overall?
Schehlein: Many surgeons are using one disposable keratome and one disposable side-port blade for every cataract surgery. If you are doing 20 surgeries every day and there are multiple surgeons in your center, that is a huge amount of waste. Transitioning to a diamond knife subscription poses the opportunity to transition from multiple single-use devices to a reusable device. I think that is a great collaboration.
I think MST is helping establish a culture of sustainability in industry. Individual surgeons can do that as well by working with their representatives in programs like this.
Reference:
- Diamond blade subscription. https://microsurgical.com/diamond-blade-subscription/. Accessed June 4, 2024.
For more information:
Emily M. Schehlein, MD, of Brighton Vision Center in Brighton, Michigan, can be reached at emschehlein@gmail.com.
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