There’s one sure way to eliminate the stress over liquids lingering in reusable endoscopes after they are reprocessed.
Switch to single-use devices.
That way you don’t have to confront the challenges that can arise during and after reprocessing, or the inevitable repairs necessitated by routine use and breakage in busy healthcare settings.
More importantly, you don’t have to fear outbreaks linked to inadequate scope drying that can and have infected patients, although the risk of device-related contamination remains rare.
For facilities still using reusables, research has found a new forced-air drying system (FADS) is superior to an alcohol flush and air purge using an automated reprocessing machine. That work, by Cori Ofstead, president and CEO of Ofstead & Associates, and others, was published in June 2024 in the American Journal of Infection Control.
“Our research team had previously found that most endoscopes in the field are still wet when put into storage cabinets,” Ofstead said in an interview in Healio. “Although conventional wisdom holds that flushing alcohol through the channels will aid in drying, recent studies have (shown) that the presence of alcohol actually impedes drying in small endoscope channels.”
Although current standards recommend that scopes be dried for 10 minutes using forced air, the researchers wanted to determine if that would be effective if alcohol was used before the final air-purge cycle in automated endoscope reprocessing (AER) machines, Ofstead said.
In contrast, the new FADS system “connects the suction and air-water cylinders on the control handle and auxiliary water inlet of the gastrointestinal endoscopes to simultaneously dry all channels,” the researchers wrote.
In the study, conducted in the inpatient endoscopy unit of a large academic medical center, the researchers found that all 42 gastroscopes and colonoscopes examined remained wet after the default AER alcohol and air purge cycles. All were dry following the FADS cycle, the researchers found.
Visual inspection of external components, droplet detection cards and borescope exams all were used to identify the retained liquid.
There is concern in the healthcare community that even the most stringent high-level disinfection procedures cannot guarantee that reusable endoscopes are clean. Single-use endoscopes such as those developed by Ambu are used once and discarded, which eliminates the chances for patient cross-contamination due to inadequate reprocessing.
Ambu offers a comprehensive portfolio of single-use endoscopy solutions within the four major endoscopy segments: pulmonology, urology, ENT and GI.
