REVO - writing update statements for table outside of modx in same db

Hi
I’ve been trying to work out how to write update statements to table outside of modx but inside the same db.
I thought I could leverage the same connection as modx somewhere.
I read http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=57183.0
and it indicates I can run


But I wasnt sure if this is safely escaped. How would I write my own prepared statements?

Learn about writing proper prepared statements using the PDO->prepare() method that is available via the modX/xPDO class.