Kenepuru Hospital Theatres

Kenepuru Hospital had two existing theatres and an additional theatre was required. The new operating theatre 3 is used for endoscopic procedures and as a reserve or overflow theatre for ophthalmology for the Outpatient Eye Clinic operating from Kenepuru Hospital.

To be able to cater for the full range of procedures that are performed in the theatre, the room lighting had to be able to adjust from 800 lux down to 25 lux with a high level of uniformity to minimise the shadowing from medical staff, equipment and the medical pendant services. The upper level of brightness is required so that theatre operating lights can be adjusted to provide in excess of 10,000 lux at the area of interest to the surgeon.

Blue lighting was requested as it allows high visual acuity at low light levels, causes minimal glare on LCD monitors and doesn’t interfere with the pupil dilation. Blue lighting in the operating theatre does have its limitations, especially for the anaesthesiologist whose task of finding veins is almost impossible under monochromatic blue light. Changing completely to white then back to blue has similar adaptation problems to changing from very dim to bright light. For this reason it is important to be able to introduce white even in a blue scene.

The lighting is managed using DALI control, providing fading between preset scenes, fine tuned to the users' needs.

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