Studies show improper ultrasound probe disinfection practices leave probes contaminated with microorganisms. This unseen risk can infect patients during critical and semi-critical procedures.
Patient safety as well the financial and reputational health of a facility are at risk when best practice reprocessing is not implemented.
A patient died from hepatitis B thought to have been transmitted by an improperly disinfected endocavitary ultrasound probe.6
The UK Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) released an alert for healthcare facilities to review all ultrasound disinfection practices in UK.
Commissioned by a national health authority, the study revealed an increased infection risk in the 30 days following endocavitary ultrasound.7
90.5% of facilities were not performing high level disinfection (HLD) of these probes at the time of the study.
Of the 982,911 patients followed, 330,500 were gynecological patients. 60,698 of these patients had undergone transvaginal ultrasound. The increased rates of infection risk following transvaginal ultrasound were startling.7
The national health authority now recommends HLD for endocavitary ultrasound probes.
Ultrasound probes need to be properly disinfected before use to mitigate infection transmission risks.
The Spaulding Classification tells us how to disinfect ultrasound probes based on how they will be used and forms the basis of international ultrasound probe reprocessing guidelines. Learn more about The Spaulding Classification and ultrasound probe reprocessing guidelines.
Condoms break up to 13% of the time and commercial covers fail up to 5% of the time.8-11 Recent literature reaffirms probe sheaths do not replace the need for HLD.11,12
A study sampled transvaginal ultrasound probes after LLD with wipes. >20% of probe heads remained contaminated with bacteria, an organism that should be eliminated by LLD (Figure below).3
Automated HLD with the trophon® device successfully eliminated bacteria in the same study from both the probe heads and handles.3
Learn more about the trophon®2 device
The trophon® family of devices includes the trophon®2 and trophon® EPR which share the same core technology of 'sonically activated' hydrogen peroxide.
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