Infection prevention and high-quality pulmonary care in operating theatres
Infection prevention and control are crucial for guaranteeing patient safety in operating theatres. When it comes to endoscopy, meticulous cleaning and high-level disinfection is needed to ensure clean and safe use of endoscopes, on subsequent patients.
In particular, bronchoscopy has a high risk of infection, making the need for sterile, accessible instruments vital. Single-use consumables can address the main concerns for potential infection risk: the distal tip/elevator, the valves, and the channels. They are ready-to-use, with no hospital sterilisation needed. Although single-use scopes cannot be re-used, resulting in more waste and sustainability challenges, specific settings such as the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) cannot afford to completely avoid disposable parts. They are needed to provide the hygiene level necessary for high-risk patients.
Enabling doctors to assess each situation and choose what is best for the patient on a case-by-case basis, is at the core of what PENTAX Medical believes in. The ultimate goal is to empower doctors with the Power of Choice (PoC) to best treat each patient and minimise the risk of infection, instead of letting the product decide what’s best for the patient – and the planet. In this way, they can ultimately make smarter and more sustainable choices.
Providing innovative endoscopic solutions means understanding clinicians’ needs to optimally treat patients, based on their specific condition – be it reusable, semi-disposable or single-use solutions.
The PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo™ single-use bronchoscope was developed to enhance infection prevention without compromising on high-quality pulmonary care, especially for situations where a risk patient is involved – either immunocompromised or with a disease.
We spoke to Dr Mariusz Skrzypczak, MD, Head of the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery Center in Poznań, Poland, who shared his clinical experience with this solution in the ICU.
What, in your opinion, are urgent unmet clinical needs that PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo addresses for surgeons and staff in the ICU?
We expect intensive care equipment to be easily accessible, always at hand and reliable. The PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo has all these features and matches our expectations. Its monitor is light, its battery life is excellent, and the picture quality is also very good. It is important to note that most of the time we work in the afternoon, at night or during weekends and holidays – when access to sterilization is limited. We use single-use equipment and the PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo meets our requirements perfectly. It has been designed in a way that it can be used as identically and intuitively as multiple-use equipment. Anyone with any experience in using multiple-use bronchoscopes can work with PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo.
When do you believe PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo best supports patients in bronchoscopy and in the ICU?
Protecting patients from catching infections from others is very important and we know that, in general, ICU patients suffer from infections. When the patient is deteriorating rapidly and we need to perform a bronchoscopy straight away, single-use equipment is essential. PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo comes in sterile packaging, which is easy to open; we can use it in any part of the operating theatre very quickly. It also ensures microbiological safety.
From a workflow perspective, where do you see the most benefit for single-use bronchoscopes, such as PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo for the ICU?
The PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo meets every demand when it comes to diagnostic procedures in the ICU. The main applications in the ICU in terms of diagnostic work are diagnosing atelectasis, bronchial anastomosis or, in case of surgery, the condition of a graft after a lung transplant.
One way of intubating difficult respiratory tracks is using a scope. In my experience, PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo does the job very well and is an essential element of safety concerning difficult respiratory tracts. For example, adjusting the placement of the double-lumen tube via bronchoscopy is very important on a daily basis in the operating theatre. We have used PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo with the 3.4 mm diameter [1]. This bronchoscope is narrow enough to be used when placing the tube assessing both the tracheal and bronchial lumen. For double-lumen tubes, sizes between 35 and 41 French work in 99% of the cases of adult patients.
Medical device manufacturers must act as smart innovators in endoscopy, offering intelligent solutions for the best possible treatment of patients, adapted to each situation. In the operating theatres, single-use bronchoscopes provide a safer way to perform procedures and can be easily added into the pre-existing solutions within a clinician’s endoscopy suite to simplify workflow, providing an alternative that can be used on a case-by-case basis.
PENTAX Medical is committed to address the hygiene challenges in endoscopy by offering solutions that minimize risks of infection, improve clinical outcomes, enhance provider experience, and increase healthcare productivity, all the while incorporating sustainable thinking in every aspect of its value chain.
- Get the full story – click here:
https://hygiene.pentaxmedical.com/en/news/infection-prevention-in-operating-theatres
Reference:
- The PENTAX Medical ONE Pulmo™ EB11-S01 has an insertion tube diameter of 3.4 mm.
