• angiography
• standards
• material
• intervention

If you have ever surveyed the angiographic procedural suite after the patient has left the room, you likely have been struck by the pile of garbage bags at the end of the case. Do you know what is in your garbage, where it goes when it leaves your suite, and what the cost is for clean up? In this issue, Shum et al go ‘dumpster diving’, measuring and classifying the trash generated by an angiographic suite.1

They find that a typical neurointerventional procedure generates approximately 8 kg of waste, similar to hip arthroscopy for femoroacetabular impingement. Embolization procedures, however, can produce nearly twice this, largely from packaging and user manuals. In addition to weighing the trash, Shum et al classified the types of waste produced: roughly 65% was regulated medical waste and sharps, 20% was general waste, and the remainder was recyclable paper and plastics.1

Current procedural care is far from environmentally green. Operating rooms and procedural suites generate an enormous amount of garbage, responsible for 30%–70% of all healthcare waste.2 …