Healthcare

Q: What is the right way to use Tergazyme to clean speculums?

A: This is a vital part of Healthcare and Medical Device instrument reprocessing and re-use, whether it is a speculum or related equipment including forceps, scalpel handles, trocars, etc.  The below typical questions are addressed in the following TechNote….

Q: I read an article in a trade publication about removing coffin wax from bone using an aqueous degreaser from your company. I can’t really find what product exactly they used. A: Coffin wax or adipocere can also be known as corpse wax, grave wax or mortuary wax, is a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses.

Q. is there any industry guidance on triple rinsing…any literature that you know of that this is the accepted standard for manual cleaning that you could provide me?
A. To our knowledge, there are no authoritative source documents to define how many times you should rinse glassware. The logic behind a triple rinse is that, in filling and emptying a vessel three times with water, each time you are diluting by 2 orders of magnitude. In theory . . .

Q: For cleaning of surgical instruments post-surgery, can Alconox Powdered Precision Cleaner be used in tandem with other cleaners? For example, can we use it with a competitor phosphate-free liquid cleaner? A:  Short answer is that Alconox® Powdered Precision Cleaner is designed to work on its own and shouldn’t need “help” from another cleaning agent. 

Q: Since foaming is so critical to COP methods, should operators be agitating the solution(s) to produce foam before and during manual cleanings?

A: Mechanical energy, agitation, and plain old elbow grease, are vital weapons in cleaning and Clean-Out-Of-Place applications. So we would recommend that wherever possible, mechanical energy be applied to remove unwanted residues from the surface we are trying to clean. This will