Duodenoscopes Often Contaminated with Dangerous Bacteria After Reprocessing

Not acceptable --   Hospitals and Surgery Centers have to do better.  These instruments should be spot checked (by the surgery centers themselves as well as the FDA/NIH/CDC etc.) for bacteria AND taken out of commission ALONG with the centers they are used in ---  if found to be contaminated, until they can prove they can be cleaned/properly sterilized between patients

Yikes. The thing someone like myself with a bio degree often thinks about as I  am going twilight before scope. Is it autoclave standard clean? Probably can't go in autoclave .....? Fade to twilight....

Glad someone is checking and getting data, but I agree with Celiac mom -not acceptable.

As a retired Endoscopy nurse(RN), at a local hospital, who cleaned our scopes, we had frequent in services from our company that we bought our equipment from. Our hospital did fire some techs and and RN when they refused to clean ERCP scopes properly. My question, are the other 97% of tested scopes OK? If so, that is a good sign that staff is cleaning well. We kept our Steris machines updated and cleaned every day. Hope this info helps. PS. I do have celiac and have Endoscopy tests often.

Awol-

 You are right, they can't be autoclaved. There are critical parts (elastomer seals?) that would simply be destroyed by the heat. There is a similar issue going on with similar equipment from the same manufacturers, colonoscopes. Perhaps you heard about the VA "scandal" and notices sent out to patients for HIV and hepatitis testing recently because of that?

 The literature from one manufacturer (for colonoscopes) calls for about an hour of manual intense cleaning, followed by a ten to twelve hour bath in disinfectant, followed by more cleaning and drying. That means if you want to do more than one procedure per day, you need one piece of equipment for EACH procedure, and staff to hang around cleaning and soaking things all night. Kinda pricey, huh?

 And a major dental school recently made the news because for two years now, their students have similarly been "wiping down" a major instrument instead of giving it a long overnight treatment. Notices were sent out to patients. A hygienist I know, who graduated from that program a decade ago, said "WHAT?! THEY CAN'T DO IT THAT WAY!" but, they did. Students are now being required to buy two instruments, so one can soak overnight while the second is ready for use first thing the next day.

 Not to mention, "twilight sleep" is still anaesthesia, and that still has a largely undiscussed damage rate. A friend of mine who had routine anaesthesia for two surgeries (they waited several days after the first one to perform the second half) actually left the planet [sic] for three months. We were helping her children make plans in case she didn't come back, because after the first two months, there was no sign, no information, when or if she would.

 Apparently there is "anaesthetic induced dementia" that no one talks about, and even anesthesiologists are often unaware of. Simple put, a significant number of patients (especially those over 60) will wake up just fine--but totally unable to recognize people and things, requiring constant care for days to months afterward.

Sometimes procedures and equipment are necessary, sometimes the doctors are simply UNEDUCATED as to the potential for collateral damage. In which case you have to put your foot down and ask, if a "gold standard" is really the only acceptable way to do things. Often, it is simply "the way we've always done it" and that's not satisfactory.

Marcus Welby, where are you? (Oh, wait, he'd never heard of celiac either...)