CENTRAL SYRINGE SERVICES. (Pp. 59. 3s. 6d.) London: Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1957. THE sterilization of syringes by boiling is acknowledged to be uncertain and unsatisfactory, but it is still common practice in most hospitals. During the last few years an increasing number of hospitals have developed a central sterile syringe service. Most of the teething troubles have now been over...

A guarantee of quality of all steps involved in processing dental materials is essential to achieve security. A descriptive study was made of how Public Dental Medicine Colleges in Brazil process critical materials and determine the patterns of physical, chemical and biological control in their use of hot air ovens and autoclaves to sterilize these materials. The data were obtained with a quest...

Background: Seven patients at a hospital in Houston, TX, were diagnosed during a two-week period in 2009 with joint space infection of pansusceptible P. aeruginosa following arthroscopic procedures of the knee or shoulder. Tosh et al. (2011), who investigated and published the principal report discussing this bacterial outbreak, conclude that its most likely cause was the improper reprocessing ...

Transmission of infection in the paediatric office is of increasing concern. The present document discusses routes of transmission of infection and the principles of current infection control measures. Prevention includes appropriate office design and administrative policies, triage, routine practices for the care of all patients (eg, hand hygiene; use of gloves, masks, eye protection and gowns...

Toxic anterior segment syndrome (TASS) developed in four cases after uneventful implantation of a foldable iris-fixated phakic intraocular lens (pIOL). Two cases occurred sequentially in one patient. The TASS subsided without complications in all cases after intensive topical steroid treatment. A multitude of possible causes is considered for the occurrence of these TASS cases. From the sterili...

Ozone is widely used for sterilization, deodorization, and cleaning. However, the effects of ozone on human are not well understood, because there is currently no reliable assay method for ozone. Therefore the accurate measurement of ozone is important for its safe use. Here, we report optimized conditions for use with fluorescein derivative 1 (probe 1). Under optimum conditions, probe 1 reacte...

Background Hydrocyclones (HCs) have been recently extensively evaluated for their application in the separation of mammalian cells in perfusion bioreactors. The high centrifugal force derived within hydrocyclones is the key mechanism for cell separation inside such small-sized simple devices. This is usually accompanied by a very short residence time of the cells inside the separating equipment...

Biofilms are communities of microorganisms within extracellular polymeric material attached to surfaces. Within a biofilm, cells have some protection from drying and other stress factors in their environment, including antimicrobial agents. In this article, the challenges to medical device reprocessing posed by biofilms are addressed. Biofilm formation on reusable medical device surfaces is a r...

Rigid endoscopes degrade during clinical use due to sterilization, ionizing radiation and mechanical forces. Despite visual checks on functionality at the department of sterilization, surgeons are still confronted with suboptimal instruments as it is difficult to assess this degradation in an objective manner. To guarantee that endoscopes have sufficient optical quality for minimal invasive sur...

The goal of medical device reprocessing is to ensure that a given device is ready for safe use on the next patient. Effective cleaning of devices is critical to achieving this goal. Device cleaning also has had an ancillary goal: rendering the device safe for handling with ungloved hands by sterile processing personnel. Such personnel are tasked with preparing the device for further reprocessin...