It is important to fill the correct agent into the correct vaporiser. If a wrong agent is filled into a vaporiser, you will be giving the wrong drug, and worse, since vaporiser designs for different agents vary, you may seriously overdose your patient.
Early vaporisers had simply a funnel into which you could pour virtually anything by mistake (including coffee).
Modern vaporisers have special filling systems specific for each anaesthetic agent to prevent inadvertent filling with an wrong agent. Think of it as a "lock and key" system, i.e. a particular key will fit only a specific lock.
There are various systems in use. In the system below, the Isoflurane filler (key) has a notch in a corner. This fits perfectly with the filling hole in the Isoflurane vaporiser. The filling hole has pin at the corner over which the notch of the Isoflurane filler key can pass over.
A different anaesthetic agent such as halothane (not commonly used anymore) has a different filling key. In this case, the key has a notch at the side instead of at the corner. So the Halothane filler key will not fit into the Isoflurane vaporiser filling hole.
The system described above is only one type of agent specific filling system. There are others that are there and depend on the manufacturers and the country you work in.
In addition to the physical shapes being different, the key fillers are also color coded (purple for Isoflurane, yellow for Sevoflurane, blue for desflurane).
Click on button to see photos of some filling systems
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There are various systems in use. In the system below, the Isoflurane filler (key) has a notch in a corner. This fits perfectly with the filling hole in the Isoflurane vaporiser. The filling hole has pin at the corner over which the notch of the Isoflurane filler key can pass over.
