by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | October 20, 2014
From the August 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“No one has perfect water and stainless steel really stands up to a lot of different things,” Tuttle says. “Some water has high lime, other water has high calcium. At first you’re not going to have an issue, but probably six to 10 years, that’s when you’re going to see issues with bad water.”
The dreaded ‘wet pack’
“Wet packs,” when an item in a set of surgical instruments contains visible moisture, is an issue that many hospitals have to contend with, and it causes a big loss of time and money when instruments have to be reprocessed. Morganstern says the cause often has to do with steam quality and sterilizers that are not well-insulated, leading to more condensation in the sterilizer jacket, the area around the chamber. Using a steam trap and a drip leg is also important, especially if sterilizers are not constantly in use, so most of the condensation will go into the drip leg and not the steam line.
“The central supply and the OR, where they interface with facilities, is much more critical than a lot of people give it credit for,” Morganstern says. “They should be a friend of facilities and, with respect to their steam quality, should have a better understanding of what they’re getting and facilities should have a better understanding of what they need and why.”
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Clean in a flash
The sterilizer market, like most of the medical equipment industry, has had its share of regulatory challenges. Most recently for sterilizers, rules were clarified for use of the abbreviated sterilization cycles for surgical instruments that were not going to be stored, and would be used soon after. Previously called flash sterilization, the term was changed to immediate use sterilization a few years ago, after the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) worked with several other health care organizations and regulatory agencies to come up with new recommendations for this quicker process, which went from a three-minute to a 10-minute cycle.
Regulations really haven’t changed much, though companies are seeing more enforcement of regulations around sterilization and pushing for recommended practices. That has to do with monitoring the sterilizer and validating that your autoclave is meeting appropriate time, temperature and pressure. Tuttle says that staff at the facilities he works with do a daily air removal and biological tests.
