Performance Cycles Desired Standard Cycles (with ADV-PB, ADV-PLUS and ADV-PRO Series Controls) Liquids – For media and any liquids. Jacket Blowdown Options is required. Provides slow exhaust to prevent liquid from boiling over. Gravity – For unwrapped goods, flash sterilization. Pre-Vac/Post-Vac – For wrapped goods, cotton, rubber, animal bedding Non-Standard Cycles (with ADV-PLUS and ADV-PRO Series Controls) Bowie-Dick – Typically utilized in healthcare sterilizers for determining proper air-removal with VACUUM units. Bowie-Dick Test Packs are required. Low-Temp Cycle – Also called ISOTHERMAL Cycle. This is utilized on heat-sensitive loads. The sterilizer operates at a much lower temperature and pressure. Vacuum Leak Test – This is used on VACUUM units to determine if the sterilizer if holds vacuum properly. Air Over Pressure – Liquid-cycle upgrade. Required for very small-volume liquid loads where evaporation control is critical. ← Help Me Choose
7.12.23 Cordyceps Sterilization: How to Kill “The Last of Us” Parasite → In HBO’s recent adaptation of “The Last of Us,” a popular action-adventure video game, life as we know it is upended by a parasitic fungus that transforms its human hosts into zombies. The culprit? Cordyceps, a real-life genus of fungus which is best known for infecting insects (most famously ants) in much the same manner […]
6.30.23 Top 13 Sterile Processing Mistakes in Hospitals → When it comes to ensuring patient safety in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), the Sterile Processing Department (SPD) is among the last lines of defense. It’s this department’s sole responsibility to make sure that reusable instruments and devices are properly decontaminated, sterilized, and ultimately safe to use in future procedures — protecting patients from […]
6.22.23 Sterilization vs. High-Level and Low-Level Disinfection [a 3-Point Comparison] → In a 1939 paper, microbiologist Earle H. Spaulding introduced a system for determining which medical devices and instruments needed disinfection and which ones required sterilization. In it, he proposed that critical instruments would need to be subjected to more stringent disinfection protocols than non-critical patient care items. Today, this framework is fittingly known as Spaulding […]