Life saving
Simply put, would you want someone’s human remains inside your body? Extreme as it sounds, there are some things that chemicals or cleaning methods may not completely remove. For example, abnormal proteins associated with rare prion diseases, such as CJD, are not living organisms and are therefore resistant to all conventional methods of decontamination. Potentially, when difficult to clean instruments are reused, these proteins can pass to the next patient and have adverse effects.
Any hospital or surgery has a duty of care to staff and patients to minimise the risk of infection. By disposing of an instrument after one use, many instances of infection are prevented, thereby minimising NHS costs, potential litigation, and mortality rates.
The argument for using sterile disposables has developed much momentum as evidence suggests rates of hospital related infection are grossly underestimated.
Based on 8.6 million surgical procedures in the UK per annum, an infection rate of 4.2% and treatment costs of approximately £2,100 per infection, the total costs of surgical site infection (SSI) in the UK is estimated at £758 million per annum. However research suggests there figures are just the tip of the iceberg.
The only way surgical procedures can be made completely safe is to use disposable instruments. Currently, there are not disposable equivalents for all medical instruments, yet with the rates of surgical site infections on the rise, and knowledge of the benefits increasing, single-use products have potential to offer reliable alternatives for all reusable products.
Perceived inadequacy with the long-term quality and efficiency of reusable instruments is building momentum as more clinical departments are shifting to single-use products. A surgeon would never reuse a scalpel blade, because it would be blunt and not fit for purpose. Why doesn't this logic currently apply to all sharp bladed instruments?
In 2010 alone, the media heavily publicised three cases where hospitals had to interrupt surgery schedules due to reusable instruments being found unclean and unsafe for use on patients.
A hospital in Wales had to cancel operations in June 2010 after out-sourcing the reprocessing of instruments resulted in quality control issues where many sets of instruments were found unusable.
Similarly, two hospitals north of London discovered traces of contamination in sets of instruments again supplied by external services. Out of 200 kits supplied, 24 were found to be contaminated. Karen Jennings, Unison head of health who represents many health workers, commented, ‘Unison has long been warning that taking sterilisation services out of hospitals is dangerous and could cost lives’.
These hospitals unfortunately received bad press not because they were incompetent, but because cross-contamination risks are high and mistakes inevitably do happen. With single-use products, these issues are eradicated, significantly reducing the risk to patients’ lives and providing them with a greater standard of care.