IS IT TIME FOR YOU TO CHANGE

The ideal situation is for a Sterile Service Department to supply clean and sterile reprocessed surgical instruments to the operating theatres. This makes life easy for everyone including the patient and the management, as nobody wants to deal with the issues should there be any problems after surgery. 

This is not easy to achieve, as the main problem for stainless surgical instruments and their baskets is their infinity to residual protein. Low level proteins including prion protein are invisible to the naked eye. If an instrument goes through the decontamination process and there is residue soil still on the instrument, it’s not clean, so it cannot be sterilized, hence it will not be sterile. Just one of the many reasons that there is a potential for cross-infection between patients and why NHS England (Department of Health) has recommended using an in-situ method of checking for the presence of low-level protein on the surface of an instrument instead of the more widely used protein swabs. 

Swabbing relies on lifting the protein from the surface of the instrument to test its presence; however, prion protein is hydrophobic and cannot be easily lifted. Giving incorrect protein readouts and a false indication that all is protein free. By using an in-situ method of testing on one side of an instrument, the SSD can see in less than 4 minutes if the instrument meets the below 5 microgram pass level set for the type of procedure it is used for. More importantly if the instrument fails, the technology highlights the location of the protein residue on the surface of the instrument and the SSD can use these results to investigate the possible causes. By adopting this method of testing the SSD can use the test data to fix potential issues in their wash process before the instruments are used on a patient.