WAYNE SPENCER offers comment on the use of low temperature sterilisation in sterile service departments, and asks whether the technology will be the subject of a revival in the UK as endoscopy techniques advance.
Having a job that allows me to visit sterile supply departments in many countries offers the opportunity to compare processes across the globe. I have found that reprocessing departments all over the world have many similarities and a visitor from any country would usually recognise the processes and equipment located within them.
However, one difference between departments in the UK, when compared to other countries is the lack of use of low temperature sterilisation
Twenty years ago, most UK sterile service departments (SSDs) used a low temperature steriliser. Indeed, the 1992 edition of Health Building Note 131 said that ‘A department may… require in support a specialised process for sterilising and/or disinfecting those items which cannot withstand porous load steam sterilisation, for example heatsensitive items’.
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