Surgical fluid management

A surgical system comprising:

• a peristaltic pump releasably engageable relative to tubing, which is to be in fluid communication with an irrigation conduit of a selected surgical instrument to define an irrigation pathway from a fluid source through the tubing and the irrigation conduit;
• and
• a control mechanism configured to enable selection of a fluid flow rate through the irrigation pathway, wherein the fluid flow rate is an independent variable and the control mechanism is configurable to control the fluid flow rate via:
• a first mode in which the fluid flow rate is selectable for the selected surgical instrument as one of a plurality of selectable digital numeric values, the plurality of selectable digital numeric values corresponding with a set of associated selectable surgical instruments;
• and
• a second mode in which the fluid flow rate is selectable for the selected surgical instrument via an alphanumeric identifier within a scale of alphanumeric identifiers, wherein each respective alphanumeric identifier of the scale of alphanumeric identifiers directly corresponds to a different size of a respective one of the set of associated selectable surgical instruments.