I love how he talks about sliding it into that groove then uses it freehand. Also, these are nicer than the one we use in our ER, which is basically a tiny bolt cutter.
When I was in the ER for a stuck ring, they ran out of ring cutters, those cheap skates. So the ER doc came out with some surgical pliers and tried to cut it, but to no avail. Doc said "these are not for ring cutting". They then sent me on my way and told me to elevate the finger since it had circulation. Took some pliers and a file to get it off.
i remember one of the old hands at the jewelry store i worked at for a summer had to cut a ring off an old lady. It was a hand-cranked cutter though, and it took 15 minutes.
It seemed like they wasted a lot of time checking the temperature- I know silver is fairly conductive, but with that insert underneath the ring, I would think that you could cut through the whole ring without getting the rest of the ring's temperature up enough to cause harm.
I doubt it would get hot enough to hurt her, but it's probably wise to check. Just the other day I was using a dremel to cut some slots in 1mm thick copper tubing, and I would have burned my finger had I not known to watch out for it.
You do a lot of stuff in medicine that doesn't make sense medically but is designed to make the patient feel more comfortable with what really needs to be done.
I've used this product before.
Generally the case is that it cuts through heavy metal quickly and heats up extremely fast. Our solution was to run cool saline over the patient's finger as the Gem was running in order to disperse the heat. Only takes about 30 seconds to cut through most bands that way.
Also, never had to use one on any fat folks. One fairly athletic fellow happened to slam-dunk some trash bags into a dumpster and suffered a minor "De-gloving".
Google THAT one if you've got the time and gumption.
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