IKEA, at least in my book, has long been the standard bearer for efficiency, cost to benefit value and function driven design with a tiny bit of flare. Even the tiny, complementary pencils have a fan page on Facebook. Now, those little pencils have broken out, albeit very likely without IKEA's knowledge, into the surgical arena.
It appears that the delightful little IKEA pencil, the omnipresent three inch wonder available at all locations, has relocated to the operating room. Doctors are apparently crazy about their quality for marking bone.
Two doctors, Karen Eley, from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford and Stephen Watt-Smith from the department of Maxillofacial Surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford extoll the virtue of the pencil on the online version of the British Medical Journal.
They wrote, "as popular as these little pencils are, we were still surprised to be handed one halfway through a surgical case . . the use of a pencil to mark osteotomy cuts in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery is well established, proving superior to the methylene, Bonney's blue and felt tipped skin markers that struggle to transfer an ink mark to bone, or are washed away be irrigation or tissue fluids."
Repeated sterilization will eventually compromise the pencil and cause it to break. Some surgeons are now wrapping the the pencil in silicon cuffs to prevent deterioration. But if I know IKEA, a design flaw is nothing more than a challenge. Perhaps medical facilities should keep on the look out for the 2011 design book featuring surgical tools and accessories.
Source: BMJ, ScienceDaily
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