Sterilization Technologies Showing Bioburdens the Exit
Sterilization is big business, with the market for sterilization equipment expected to reach $5.3 billion by 2018. The overall market for sterilization and disinfection is projected to reach $14 billion by 2017.
Wed Nov 06 2013
You’ve just made it through a three-hour surgery and the doctor reports that they have reason to believe that the surgical instruments used were not fully sterilized. They fear that you were exposed to a dangerous bacteria. While microorganisms may have not been in the forefront of your mind hours ago, the importance of disinfection and sterilization has just hit home.
The Central Sterile Processing department is nearly as invisible to the patient as the clinical engineering department can be. Yet, every surgical procedure and a large number of hospital stays, might present the patient with the same bad news if disinfection and sterilization weren’t a part of hospital procedures.
Sterilization is big business, with the market for sterilization equipment expected to reach $5.3 billion by 2018. The overall market for sterilization and disinfection is projected to reach $14 billion by 2017.While the FDA may have approved radiation treatment for the sterilization of poultry and vegetables, it is the patient’s own flora that presents a challenge in surgical prep. Zapping a patient with radiation isn’t an option, so the patient, the disposables and the surgical instruments must be clean, disinfected and sterilized.
It’s not only surgical instruments that pose an infection hazard to the patient. In one study, three out of 20 gastrointestinal endoscopes were found to have unacceptable levels of contaminants that posed an infection risk. Contaminated endoscopes lead all medical devices as a source of illness caused by the spread of bio contaminants such as hepatitis B and C as well as HIV.
Along with endoscopes, rigid and flexible cystoscopes require a unique reprocessing. The challenge to find sterilization methods for all instruments, and for manufacturers to produce instruments that are easier to sterilize, is a goal of everyone involved.
With these concerns affecting the well-being of a growing patient population, what steps are being taken to address this crucial element in healthcare and what technologies will clobber the bioburden contamination?
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