Операционная: история и современность

A room in a hospital in which surgeries are performed

An operating theater (also known as an Operating Room (OR), operating suite, operation suite, or Operation Theatre (OT)) is a facility within a hospital where surgical operations are carried out in an aseptic environment. Historically, the term "operating theater" referred to a non sterile, tiered theater or amphitheater in which students and other spectators could watch surgeons perform surgery. Contemporary operating rooms are usually devoid of a theater setting, making the term "operating theater" a misnomer in those cases.

Early operating theaters in an educational setting had raised tables or chairs at the center for performing operations surrounded by steep tiers of standing stalls for students and other spectators to observe the case in progress. The surgeons wore street clothes with an apron to protect them from blood stains, and they operated bare handed with unsterilized instruments and supplies. The University of Padua began teaching medicine in 1222. It played a leading role in the identification and treatment of diseases and ailments, specializing in autopsies and the inner workings of the body. In 1884 German surgeon Gustav Neuber implemented a comprehensive set of restrictions to ensure sterilization and aseptic operating conditions through the use of gowns, caps, and shoe covers, all of which were cleansed in his newly invented autoclave. In 1885 he designed and built a private hospital in the woods where the walls, floors and hands, arms and faces of staff were washed with mercuric chloride, instruments were made with flat surfaces and the shelving was easy to clean glass. Neuber also introduced separate operating theaters for infected and uninfected patients and the use of heated and filtered air in the theater to eliminate germs. In 1890 surgical gloves were introduced to the practice of medicine by William Halsted. Aseptic surgery was pioneered in the United States by Charles McBurney.

The oldest surviving operating theater is thought to be the 1804 operating theater of the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. The 1821 Ether Dome of the Massachusetts General Hospital is still in use as a lecture hall. Another surviving operating theater is the Old Operating Theatre in London. Built in 1822, it is now a museum of surgical history. The Anatomical Theater at the University of Padua, in Italy, inside Palazzo Bo was constructed and used as a lecture hall for medical students who observed the dissection of corpses, not surgical operations. It was commissioned by the anatomist Girolamo Fabrizio d'Acquapendente in 1595.