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STORING STERILIZED MATERIAL
General
The sterilized material must be adequately treated and stored to maintain its sterility over time, until its use.
Inadequate storage can
cause rapid recontamination.
This leads to problems regardless of what you do since you will either be using recontaminated material (most of the time unconsciously), placing
the user and patient at risk, or you will have to run the sterilization cycle again, with an inevitable waste of time and resources.
For this reason, we think it will be useful to provide several basic suggestions, leaving the operator the task of further study of specific texts.
Handling
Assuming that the sterilizer is located in a clean place, free of dust and not too damp, the following precautions should be taken when handling
and/or carrying sterile material:
1. Remove the load from the sterilization chamber wearing gloves and a clean, or even better, sterilized smock. As an additional precaution, wear a protective
mask on your face;
2. Rest the tray on a dry
, suitably clean and disinfected surface. Take care to distance or, at any rate, separate the sterile material from the area where
contaminated material is kept waiting to be sterilized;
3. Touch the material and/or instruments as little as possible, taking extreme care not to cut or damage the wrappings;
4. Let the instruments cool
before any transport (and subsequent storage). If necessary for transport, transfer the material using dry, clean and disinfected
containers. The containers must be closed
or, if open, covered with clean cloths.
Storage
Sterile material waiting for used must be stored using the appropriate techniques. These will significantly slow recontamination:
1. Store the material and/or instruments in the protective wrappings that were used during sterilization. Do not wrap the instruments after sterilization since, in
addition to being useless and completely senseless, is also potentially damaging;
2. Store the material in a dry
, suitably clean and disinfected place, far from the area where infected material passes. If possible, use closed compartments
equipped with ultraviolet light;
3. Identify
the sterile material by attaching the sterilization data (attaching a copy of the printed report or an adhesive label);
4. First use the material that has been stored the longest (FIFO, "First In First Out"). This results in material that is homogeneously stored, avoiding storing for
too long, with the consequent risks.
5. Never store material for too long. In fact, do not overlook the fact that materials will tend to degrade and be recontaminated in a finite time, even when the
above instructions are followed.
e Consult the specifications provided by the manufacturer of the packaging material relative to the maximum allowed storage time.
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