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I don't work in a hospital now, but when I was in the armed forces I worked as a medic and so occassionally worked in field hospitals, during that time back between 1978 and 1996 we had autoclaves that cleaned kit. Can modern PPE survive an autoclave?
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Plastic tends to do badly when heated.
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 1 user thanked Kate for this useful post.
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Depends on the PPE Reusable RPE, PVC suits, rubber boots can simply be laundered. Disposable PPE means disposable, single use, in this case NO.
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Well you can always use ethylene oxide, except that it is highly flammable and toxic so you need special facilities for that and of course the use of gamma radiation is very effective but not something that you can use at home. The simple fact is that most of the PPE designed to be single use. Once hospitals had whole departments set aside for sterilising and disinfecting equipment. But this was a) expensive as you need trained staff and the equipment had to be maintained b) potentially dangerous as the reagents they were using were hazardous. It was easier to transfer the risk to dedicated suppliers. c) Quality control was an issue. If you look up archive images of sterilising areas you will see the staff all smoking as they pack up the now clean items in brown paper parcels. You wonder what else they got up to.
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Thanks for the replies, it is as I suspected. The final bastion of the 'throw away society'. Single use of anything has become a 'no,no', especially when it's made of flimsy plastic. The military supply systems of the world realised this about 20 years ago and stopped putting so much emphasis on items being single use. It seems the medical services industry needs to catchup. So to me at least, there seems to be an opportunity to redesign much of the medical PPE being used today with the help of material science to make better reuseable products that can be disinfected using an autoclave or some other device that neutralises biological and chemical contaminants.
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Auoclaves do not clean they only sterilize the material inside. You would have to wash the items first and then place them in a clean autoclave.
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Technically I suppose it could be possible to design items such as PPE to be reusable. The problem I see is in the logistics. How will the used PPE be collected, transported safely to the site where the cleaning is to take place? How will it be handled there so that those involved in the cleaning process are not exposed? How will it be transported back to the location where it is to be used in a manner in which it remains clean - and presumably in many cases sterile? Who will decide how many times each item may be cleaned and reused? Who will be responsible for checking that it is in a safe and usable condition and how will this be done? Presumably certain chemicals will be involved in the process. How will these be managed, particularly how disposed of? What will all of this cost? Who will fund the investment in premises, equipment, training, personnel?
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Chris - I don't think they would need chemicals if using an autoclave, but there would need to be investment in autoclaves (and all the associated equipment e.g. steam plant) and the days when every sizeable hospital had its own laundry are long past - so a substantial rethink of hospital design probably required. AK - when I joined HSE, ethylene oxide was still used in some banana ripening factories. But was rapidly going out of fashion as they had tended to go bang! [the little snippets of useless information one remembers from the distant past]
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Dare I say we have fallen upon our own sword - to eliminate risk, time and effort involved with cleaning and handling we have pursued single use. To make this cost effective we have purchased from "cheap" labour overseas, and now the whole world wants the same item from a finite supply chain at the same time. Trouble is we will not learn from this - when we move on from this crisis and are back on the Cost Del Sol for our annual vacation the supply chains will revert to type "give me cheap" to support the share holder dividend / personal bonus.
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Dare I say we have fallen upon our own sword - to eliminate risk, time and effort involved with cleaning and handling we have pursued single use. To make this cost effective we have purchased from "cheap" labour overseas, and now the whole world wants the same item from a finite supply chain at the same time. Trouble is we will not learn from this - when we move on from this crisis and are back on the Cost Del Sol for our annual vacation the supply chains will revert to type "give me cheap" to support the share holder dividend / personal bonus.
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Of course the shareholder dividend is what pays for your pension: we are all to blame! Nice thought!
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Originally Posted by: Kim Hedges  I don't work in a hospital now, but when I was in the armed forces I worked as a medic and so occassionally worked in field hospitals, during that time back between 1978 and 1996 we had autoclaves that cleaned kit. Can modern PPE survive an autoclave?
Kim I know the conversation has moved on but although thermoplastics would probably not survive an autoclave, have you considered cold sterilising in a bucket of Milton sterilising fluid (subject to your COSHH assessment obviously)?
I make no comment on the current situation we find ourselves in - we are where we are, I'm just thinking aloud for solutions/ ideas. (Captcha = h13N ~ sounds like a virus name)
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Yossarian, I posted this topic as the devils advocate, thinking ahead, it makes sense that if the PPE supply logistics is failing, then in that case, 'we' should look at ways of re-using existing stocks and thinking of what 'we' used to do back in the days when we didn't have lots of PPE and surgical instruments - before the 1970's throw away single use policy that we still use today. Chris.P good points. I was aware of the difference between cleaning and sterilising, but it's good that you pointed it out, I wish I'd have remembered to point it out too.
I'm guessing that PPE would be autoclaved first, to make the 'bugs' inert and then a normal hot water wash.
[ I saw a short news package about new PPE needing the requirement to be able to stand up to 3 washes, in relation to the new UK suppliers starting to make PPE in this country finally, but is this a new PPE requirement? ]
In the House of Commons PMQ's today (22/04/20), they talked about the thousands of clothing manufacturers offering to make PPE, but it did sound like there is a minimum requirement in item numbers per 'factory', which I'd like to challenge, but the new Shadow PM didn't quite grasp the problem and Mr Raab was quite cagey with his answers.
Edited by user 22 April 2020 12:17:20(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel Of course the shareholder dividend is what pays for your pension
To be on that pension in the retirement of my dreams......
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Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel Of course the shareholder dividend is what pays for your pension
To be on that pension in the retirement of my dreams......
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You can't as a national government change the "European Standards" EU 2016/425 under which PPE is supplied - we may have voted Brexit but we are still under CE marking until 31st December 2020! Regarding every Tom, Dick & Harry with a 3D printer making PPE - great except we need large, and more importantly consistent quality volumes, to support the providers during this period. CEN and Europe have made the standards for PPE available Free Of Charge so that providers can see if their potential offering is suitable https://www.cencenelec.eu/News/Press_Releases/Pages/PR-2020-003.aspx As responded on another post there are plenty of products which whilst appearing suitable (packaging bearing CE mark and the like) do not offer the required level of protection to the wearer.
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You can't as a national government change the "European Standards" EU 2016/425 under which PPE is supplied - we may have voted Brexit but we are still under CE marking until 31st December 2020! Regarding every Tom, Dick & Harry with a 3D printer making PPE - great except we need large, and more importantly consistent quality volumes, to support the providers during this period. CEN and Europe have made the standards for PPE available Free Of Charge so that providers can see if their potential offering is suitable https://www.cencenelec.eu/News/Press_Releases/Pages/PR-2020-003.aspx As responded on another post there are plenty of products which whilst appearing suitable (packaging bearing CE mark and the like) do not offer the required level of protection to the wearer.
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6 users thanked Roundtuit for this useful post.
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