Electrosurgery: History and Fundamentals

The concept of using heat to stop bleeding goes back thousands of years. Throughout the centuries, researchers have constructed various devices that use electricity as a means to heat tissue and control bleeding. Electrosurgery became more widely used in the late 1920s because of the urgent need to safely control bleeding in operative and invasive procedures. The evolution of the equipment has continued throughout its history to the devices of today that take the patient tissues into consideration during energy delivery for hemostasis.