Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Focused Factories - November 2015 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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W ith their long, narrow lumens, right-angle bends and mishmash of springs, caps, valves and connection sites where bacteria can hide, flexible endoscopes might be the hardest instruments to clean. Even if your techs diligently follow manufacturers' instructions and pro- fessional guidelines for reprocessing, there's still a chance that viable microbes and biologic debris could persist on your endoscopes. This helps explain why there are more outbreaks of infection associated with endoscopes than with any other reusable medical device. It also strongly suggests that today's reprocessing guidelines and practices aren't suffi- cient to curb increasing GI scope-related outbreaks. Some are now calling for a radical shift in scope reprocessing from high-level disinfection to steam sterilization. A leading proponent of this shift is infection prevention expert William Rutala, PhD, MPH. "Sterilization is the only way to unify reprocessing and reduce the 1 0 2 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 A New Way to Clean GI Scopes Some are calling for a shift in endoscope reprocessing from high-level disinfection to steam sterilization. z COILED AND SOILED Use of a contaminated endoscope may lead to patient-to-patient transmission of potentially infectious pathogens. Pamela Bevelhymer, RN, BSN Dan O'Connor Editor-in-Chief

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