Loupe accessories can be very helpful, especially the headlights. One of the greatest advantages of the loupe-mounted headlights is mobility. When wearing head-mounted, plug-in headlights, a change in position may require the circulating nurse to reposition the cords, taking time away from the surgery. With light sources that you wear on your waist, the surgeon can move around the patient without twisting cords with their assistants. Many loupe companies offer these headlights and are discussed below.
Designs For Vision
This company not only produces the most popular surgical loupes, but also offers a variety of headlights. These lights mount to the loupe frames or can be worn on a headband. The battery lasts anywhere from 4 to 16 hours, depending on the type of light.
Surgitel
Head-Mounted Headlight
These headlights have adjustable brightness knobs, lithium batteries that last up to 8 hours, and they fit on SurgiTel and other telescopes, frames or headbands.
SurgiTel’s Loupe-Mounted Headlights are seen below.
- Fiber Optic Light
- Micro LED
- High Intensity Mini LED
SurgiCam Pro - Loupe-Mounted Video Camera
This is an innovative and interesting accessory.
The camera comes with a USB plug & play digital output so you don’t have to install drivers. It can be attached to loupes or frames and is miniaturized to make it light weight. The camera is offered in 2x, 3x and 5x magnification, and the focal distance is set to your working distance so the view will always be in focus. This system records to AVI format, it plays instantly for real time, and captures still pictures. It runs at 30 fps, has a resolution of video 640 x 480 and photo 1280 x 1024, has hardware compression up to 100:1, and an operating temperature of 32 – 104 degrees F. The minimum system requirements are Intel Pentium III 75 MHz, 128 MB RAM, hard disk with 10GB of available hard disk space, Windows XP operating system, USB 1.1 port, and CD-ROM R/W.
Sheer Vision
V-Ray, Infinity Ultra2, and Ultra mini Surgical Headlights are portable headlights with intensities of up to 9000 foot candles or 97,200 lux. These headlights can be customized to mount to various loupes and weigh between 0.25 and 0.7 ounces (7 – 17 grams). They also can be ordered in a surgical headband or soft headband.
Zeiss
Zeiss offers Loupe Contact Guards. This accessory is sterilizable so you can adjust your loupes during the surgery. They also have protective lens caps and side shields for the titanium frames. They also offer headlights that can be mounted on their various loupes.
Loupes alone are very helpful for many ophthalmic surgeries, but the accessories are an extra added benefit, especially the loupe lights.