By: Peggy Luebbert
Infection preventionists and central services professionals devote their careers to ensuring that patients are safe from potentially fatal infections that can be acquired in medical settings. With approximately 300,000 surgical site infections (SSIs) occurring annually in U.S. hospitals, resulting in approximately 9,000 attributable deaths, these healthcare professionals strive to ensure their hospitals’ sterilization protocols are current and identify new potential causes of infection. Recent instances of bacterial infections due to contaminated endoscopes have shocked the infection prevention community. To think that the very instruments designed to keep patients healthy, have caused fatal infections, is horrifying. As it turns out, however, endoscopes may not be the only items in the OR that aren’t doing their job.
A
recent scientific study published in the
American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) found that certain sterilization packaging systems, used to maintain the sterility of surgical instruments from the time of sterilization until use in the OR, may also not be doing an adequate job. The study, conducted by the research group Applied Research Associates, and funded by Halyard Health (formerly Kimberly-Clark Heath Care), evaluated the effectiveness of rigid containers versus sterilization wrap – the two main types of sterile packaging systems – at preventing bacteria from contaminating their contents post-sterilization.
The study evaluated 111 rigid containers and 161 wrapped trays using sterilization wrap and found that the wrapped trays demonstrated greater protection of their contents than rigid containers.v More specifically, after terminal sterilization 87 percent of rigid containers allowed bacteria to enter during transport and handling, and older containers with 5 to 9 years of use were more likely to contain higher levels of bacterial contamination than unused or newer containers. However, even the unused and newer containers contained bacteria. One hundred percent of sterilization wraps, on the other hand, successfully prevented bacteria from entering during transport and handling.
These findings are particularly compelling given that the sterilization packaging systems were subjected to a series of bacterial challenges mimicking the real-life conditions of a hospital setting. However, they aren’t entirely novel. Nearly a decade earlier
another study published in AJIC explored the ability of rigid containers to protect their contents from exposure to bacteria post-sterilization. Similar to its more recent counterpart, the study found the vast majority of rigid containers to be ineffective in maintaining sterility of their contents.
