Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Queasy Feeling - April 2017 - 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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Some experts believe it's time to move beyond high-level disinfec- tion by sterilizing flexible endoscopes. I'm not sure that would be an effective strategy. Whichever sterilizing technology is used — chemi- cal sterilants, ethylene oxide, hydrogen peroxide or gas plasma — has to come in contact with the harmful organisms that reside inside scopes. If biofilm isn't effectively removed during scope cleaning, as is often the case, sterilization's effectiveness can be limited. Sterilization does provide a higher kill rate than high-level disinfec- tion, but improving cleaning practices is where facilities need to focus their infection prevention efforts. I contribute to the endoscopy stan- dards for the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation. Many people within the group believe sterilization has to play a larger role in endoscope reprocessing than it does now, but none that I have spoken to believe it would solve the problem of trying to reprocess dirty scopes. OSM A P R I L 2 0 1 7 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 1 9 Mr. Myers (frmyers@ucsd.edu) is the assistant director of infection prevention and clinical epidemiology at University of California San Diego Health in San Diego, Calif.

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