Leftover surgical residue also damages equipment, causing pitting
and ultimately making instruments impossible to sterilize, says Mr.
Myers. "You can't clean it if it's pitted, because there's no way to get in
and make sure all the organic material is gone. You can put it in the
sterilizer as many times as you want. It's still not going to be sterile."
3. Use AERs that also clean
The sterilization challenges associated with some instruments may
simply be too demanding to perform manually. Mr. Myers recom-
mends using not just automatic endoscope reprocessors (AERs), but
also using those with "cleaning claims," which most don't have.
"The literature shows that when endoscope cleaning is done manu-
ally, there's only about a 1% chance you're going to do all the steps, in
