Johns Hopkins experts in applied physics, computer engineering, infectious diseases, emergency medicine, microbiology, pathology and surgery have unveiled a 7-foot-tall, $10,000 shower-cubicle-shaped device that automatically sanitizes in 30 minutes all sorts of hard-to-clean equipment in the highly trafficked hospital emergency department. The novel device can sanitize and disinfect equipment of all shapes and sizes, from intravenous line poles and blood pressure cuffs, to pulse oximeter wires and electrocardiogram (EKG) wires, to computer keyboards and cellphones.

The Johns Hopkins designed and built "SUDS," a self-cleaning unit for the decontamination of small instruments.

The invention, nicknamed "SUDS" for self-cleaning unit for the decontamination of small instruments, has already been shown to initially disinfect noncritical equipment better than manual cleaning, they report in the Annals of Surgical Innovation and Research online July 30.
Study senior author and surgeon Bolanle Asiyanbola, M.D., says the four-year SUDS project was initially sparked by the rapid rise in use of expensive disposable items, a trend linked to efforts to prevent bacterial infections among and between patients in hospitals.

Drawing on her experience in the operating room, where many batches of surgical clamps, retractors and scalpels have been sterilized, decontaminated and safely re-used for decades, Asiyanbola put together a team to end what she calls the "wasteful and unnecessary" practice of wiping down a lot of heavily used items with disinfectants and applying a lot of elbow grease. "If we can safely re-use equipment in the operating room, then we can do it elsewhere in the hospital for non-critical equipment," she says.

In the study, the Johns Hopkins team showed that SUDS was able to disinfect some 90 pieces of used emergency-room equipment, placing as many as 15 items in the device and "fogging" the equipment with an aerosolized, commercially available disinfectant chemical, or biocide, called Sporicidin. None of the electronic circuitry appeared to be damaged by the decontamination process. Instruments tested were of the type that come in direct contact with a patient's skin, the body's key barrier to infection.

Repeated swabbing and lab culture testing of each decontaminated instrument showed that all items remained free of so-called gram-positive bacteria for two full days after cleaning, even after the equipment was returned to the emergency department and re-used. On the bacteria-free list were such potentially dangerous superbugs as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).

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