Reprocessing of reusable medical devices

Reusable medical devices are nothing but those devices that can be reused by health care providers to treat and diagnose various patients. Examples of reusable medical devices involve endoscopes, surgical forceps, and stethoscopes. When employed on patients, reusable device turns out to be contaminated and soiled with microorganisms. To prevent any jeopardy of infection due to contaminated device, reusable devices goes through reprocessing—a multistep, detailed procedure to clean and then sterilize or disinfect them. This reprocessing not only cleans them but is also the main reason boosting the reprocessed medical devices market.

As soon as the basic steps for reprocessing are done and followed correctly post each employment of the device, reprocessing turns a medical device that can be securely utilized many times on the similar patient or different patients. Sufficient reprocessing of reusable medical devices is necessary for guarding safety of patient.

Some key players in the reprocessed medical devices market are SterilMed, Inc., Stryker Sustainability, MidWest Reprocessing Center, ReNu Medical, Inc., SureTek Medical, Vanguard AG, Hygia Health Services, Inc., Medline ReNewal, and Centurion Medical Products Corp. among others.

Insufficient cleaning among patient utilization can cause in the preservation of tissue, blood, and other biological fragments in definite kinds of reusable medical devices. These fragments can permit microbes to live the subsequent sterilization or disinfection process, which could then cause to Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI). Insufficient reprocessing can also cause in various unpleasant patient results such as irritation of tissue due to residual reprocessing materials, such as chemical disinfectants.

The jeopardy of getting such an illness from an poorly reprocessed medical device is comparatively low seeing the huge number of such devices in utilization, even though the probability for outbursts of infection related with their utilization remains a significant health concern for public. According to a survey by National Institutes of Health in 2005, 42% of hospitals failed to reprocess the medical devices properly, thus increasing the jeopardy of Healthcare-Associated Infections. In addition to this, infections from poorly reprocessed devices are not frequently reported or acknowledged to the FDA. The number of Healthcare-Associated Infections that can be recognized due to insufficient device reprocessing is unidentified since it is not regularly examined as a cause of Healthcare-Associated Infections.