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The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation has teamed up with nearly a dozen other healthcare organizations and regulatory agencies to formulate new recommendations for sterilization of items intended for immediate use, in response to concerns that the process is misunderstood and misused by many healthcare facilities.
AAMI recently convened the group where attendees discussed when to use and what to call the process historically known as flash sterilization. The process is an abbreviated cycle of steam sterilization meant for instruments to be used immediately, as opposed to terminal sterilization, where the items are sterilized and stored for later use. However, in many healthcare organizations today, there are several abbreviated cycles that are available for safe and efficacious processing of instruments intended for immediate use, as long as the critical steps of cleaning, decontamination, and aseptic transport are followed. Moreover, some instruments are wrapped or packaged to allow aseptic transfer to the point of use.
The group is working on a position paper on what they propose should be termed “immediate-use steam sterilization.”
“I think all of the organizations agree to the critical steps involved in the process,” said Cynthia Spry, an independent clinical consultant and the facilitator of the meeting. “The questions are ‘what is it, and when is it OK to use flash? What are some key factors to keep in mind when you are using this method’?”
The summit included representatives from AAMI, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), the American Dental Association (ADA), American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS), Association for Professionals in Infection Control (APIC), the International Association of Healthcare Central Service Materiel Management (IAHCSMM), and ASC Quality Collaboration.
In addition, representatives from regulatory and accreditation agencies, such as The Joint Commission, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC), the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities (AAAASF), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attended.
Source: AAMI News: June 2010, Vol. 45, No. 6