How clean is clean? Chemistry can damage medical equipment in the quest to meet stringent guidelines

摘要

What happened at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL, is a nightmare for any hospital. In 2013, the country's largest outbreak ever of a highly dangerous bacteria—carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE)—was linked to endoscopic procedures performed at the hospital.1 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, even manual cleaning and "high-level disinfection" failed to kill E. coli and other bacteria in the device. There were, however, no flaws in the hospital's cleaning protocol (which has since been changed to include gas sterilization for these devices, which exceeds the manufacturer's recommended cleaning and disinfectant guidelines).