Prototype sanitiser disinfects small hospital instruments
Experts in applied physics, computer engineering, infectious diseases, emergency medicine, microbiology, pathology and surgery at the Johns Hopkins University in the US have unveiled a device that automatically sanitises in 30 minutes hard-to-clean equipment in the hospital emergency department.
The 7-foot-tall, $10,000 shower-cubicle-shaped novel device can sanitise and disinfect equipment of all shapes and sizes, from intravenous line poles and blood pressure cuffs, to pulse oximeter wires and electrocardiogram wires, to computer keyboards and cellphones.
The invention, nicknamed “SUDS” – for self-cleaning unit for the decontamination of small instruments – has already been shown to initially disinfect noncritical equipment better than manual cleaning, according to a report in the Annals of Surgical Innovation and Research online.
According to study senior author and surgeon Bolanle Asiyanbola, the four-year SUDS project was initially sparked by the rapid rise in use of expensive disposable items, a trend linked to efforts to prevent bacterial infections among and between patients in hospitals. “If we can safely re-use equipment in the operating room, then we can do it elsewhere in the hospital for non-critical equipment,” she says.
In the study, the Johns Hopkins team showed that SUDS was able to disinfect some 90 pieces of used emergency-room equipment, placing as many as 15 items in the device and “fogging” the equipment with an aerosolised, commercially available disinfectant chemical, or biocide, called Sporicidin. None of the electronic circuitry appeared to be damaged by the decontamination process. Instruments tested were of the type that comes in direct contact with a patient’s skin.
Repeated swabbing and lab culture testing of each decontaminated instrument showed that all items remained free of gram-positive bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), for two full days after cleaning, even after the equipment was returned to the emergency department and re-used.
By contrast, testing of an equal number of similar items that were manually scrubbed down with a disinfectant solution called Airex showed that 25% of the devices had bacterial growth after two days, including growth of potentially dangerous gram-positive bacteria, such as MRSA and VRE, as well as gram-negative type bacteria, most notably Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii, plus some types of fungi.
“Our study results with the prototype offer strong evidence that more can be done to disinfect noncritical equipment through automated decontamination processes in heavily trafficked areas of the hospital,” says Asiyanbola, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We believe this SUDS device has the potential to further protect our patients and staff from hospital infections by making it possible to clean and re-use more kinds of hospital equipment.”
The Hopkins inventors, who have patent applications pending, say more studies must be done to determine if SUDS is effective for other hospital superbugs, notably Clostridium difficile.