The Clinical Services Journal speaks to Single Use Surgical – a company that was established as a response to UK hospitals’ concerns over cleaning practices – to find out why they champion single-use alternatives to reusable instruments.
In 2015, a multi-centre Lumen Inspection Survey inspected instruments from 71 hospitals in the US and revealed that 70% of instruments were classified as ‘dirty’, with suction tubes being one of the highest percentage instrument categories to fail inspection. Among the foreign matter found on the instruments included blood, bone, brush fibres and human hair.
He pointed out that UK hospitals have also identified that fine lumen suction tubes used in surgery pose a high risk of patient-topatient cross infection due to them being too difficult to clean. Surgical instruments such as cannulae have narrow channels and sharp bends that are extremely difficult to clean and a result, debris will often linger that is invisible to the human eye. To address this issue, the company has worked closely with surgeons to develop single-use equivalents
“Reusing surgical instruments poses an increased risk of patient-to-patient crossinfection,” said Michael Denver, export manager at Single Use Surgical. “It is a hidden threat in the operating theatre and Single Use Surgical was established to tackle this issue.”
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