Operating theater

Operating rooms are spacious, in a cleanroom, and well-lit, typically with overhead surgical lights, and may have viewing screens and monitors.

Operating rooms are generally windowless, though windows are becoming more prevalent in newly built theaters to provide clinical teams with natural light, and feature controlled temperature and humidity.

People in the operating room wear PPE (personal protective equipment) to help prevent bacteria from infecting the surgical incision.

The surgeons wore street clothes with an apron to protect them from blood stains, and they operated bare-handed with unsterilized instruments and supplies.

[6] 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.

[7][8] 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.

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.

Inside a modern Operating Room
Hybrid operating room for cardiovascular surgery at Gemelli Hospital in Rome
The Agnew Clinic , 1889, by Thomas Eakins, showing the tiered arrangement of observers watching the operation.
An operating room in the United States, c. 1960; heart–lung machine with rotating disc oxygenator shown
The University of Padua houses the oldest surviving permanent anatomical theatre in Europe, dating from 1595. It was used as an anatomical lecture hall where professors operated only on corpses.
Old Operating Theatre in London