Every scope has a
different IFU, she
adds. "If you know
how to clean a cysto-
scope, it's a totally dif-
ferent process to do
the colonoscopes —
longer channels, dif-
ferent leak tester. All
of the rules change
with every single
scope. I'm sure the people who do it all day, every day are better at it
than me, but what about when they're pressured to go faster or inter-
rupted?"
It's dangerously tempting for techs to think it's okay to cut the
5-minute flush-and-brush down to 3 minutes because the AER will
clean what they miss, says Mr. Lavanchy. "The scope must be cleaned
before you put it in the machine," he stresses. "Don't count on the
AER to take care of cleaning. It's not intended to do that. Some mod-
els have cleaning stages in them, but you need to put a manually
cleaned scope into the machine to ensure you get a good result.
Shortcutting the process can potentially risk infections down the
line."
Time to sterilize?
The patient was nervous about his upcoming colonoscopy, not about
the prep or the propofol or the procedure, but about the risk of infec-
tion from the scope.
"Don't worry. All of our scopes are sterile," you assure him.
"Sterile?" he asks.
M A R C H 2 0 1 7 • O U T PA T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T • 3 9
• CLEANING VERIFICATION A tech collects samples from a sterilized ureteroscope to test for the presence of protein,
hemoglobin, ATP and microbes.
Ofstead
&
Associates
